The center of the cyclone

QUESTIONS FROM NEWSWEEK, USA.

SONNTAGS BLICK, SWITZERLAND TEMPO, GERMANY

Question 1:

It is impossible for me to fantasize. I have lost my mind and its stupid activities thirty-five years back.

Right now I am just utterly empty of words, dreams, fantasies. In their place I am full of love, silence, blissfulness.

Question 2:

I never plan for the future.

Today is enough unto itself.

I love the people here. I see something of Zorba in everybody, but because I never make any plans for the future, I cannot say how long I am going to stay here.

Perhaps forever...

Perhaps tomorrow I am gone...

I am just a breeze that comes and goes without any planning.

Question 3:

In my heart of hearts I have found the place that is my place, my home. I am not thinking to establish another commune. Communes will be established more and more around the world. I would love to be a visitor to my people around the world; I don't want to stay at one place. The few days that existence will allow me will be my days of wandering around the world amongst all my people.

Question 4:

In the first place I don't want to establish any commune around me.

In the second place, I am sorry to say I don't understand anything about finance. I don't have any bank account. I have not even touched money for thirty years. I have been in America for five years - I have not seen a dollar bill.

I live totally trusting existence. If it wants me to be here it will manage. If it does not want me to be here, it will not manage.

My trust in existence is total.

The people who don't trust in existence trust in money, trust in God and trust in all kinds of idiotic things.

Question 5:

Except me, nobody understands it - for the simple reason that the United States has been so cunning, so fascist, and forced me to do things...

I will give you one example. They arrested me without any warrant. They did not tell me why I was arrested; their answer was the points of their guns. Whenever a government goes mentally bankrupt, this happens.

Then they forced me into jail to sign under a false name, David Washington. I refused. The U.S.

Marshal who was telling me to sign under a false name asked me, "Why are you making a fuss about it? You can sleep; I can go to sleep. It is midnight."

I said, "I don't care about you and your sleep, but I want to know, What kind of justice is this? You arrest me and you want me to sign under David Washington's name. That means you never arrested me - because you have no warrant - and if I sign under David Washington's name, you can kill me and there will be no proof that I ever entered the jail. I will simply disappear into thin air. You write the name of David Washington; fill the form in your own handwriting - and I will sign."

He thought I was willing to sign David Washington, so he filled it in his own handwriting - and I simply signed my own name.

He said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Exactly what should be done. This is my name - and now you are caught. Tomorrow morning in all the newspapers and on all the televisions and radios the news will be there. You cannot throw away this form. My signature is known all over the world, and it is not easy to copy it. In the first place it is difficult to understand what it is... You have written everything in your own handwriting - you are the criminal."

The last thing they did - because they had nothing against me: before the trial the government attorneys came to my attorneys, which is a rare thing. Only the weaker party goes to the stronger party for negotiations. They came to negotiate the case before the trial began; and the negotiations they were proposing... I will tell you exactly how cunning it was.

The condition was: "If Osho accepts the guilt on two small counts, then we will allow him to leave the jail. We will allow the judge to release him with only one condition: that he will not be able to enter America for five years.

"If you don't accept the terms and you want to fight the case - although we know and you know that we don't have any case against him - then we will not allow him to be bailed out. And the case can be prolonged for five years, ten years, fifteen years. We know you will win the case, so we will prolong it as much as possible. And the whole pressure of the government is on it; it is a question of prestige. We don't want to be defeated by a single individual."

My attorneys came with tears in their eyes. They were not sannyasins; they were the topmost attorneys in the United States. But in these twelve days while I was in jail they were coming to see me, and by and by something of love, something of respect had already happened. They would come into the jail and they would say, "We cannot sit on the chair in front of you; it feels strange.

Allow us to sit on the floor just the way you allow your sannyasins to sit."

They came with tears, and they said, "They have proposed such a thing that we are in a dilemma.

We know you are not guilty and we know that you are not going to accept that you are guilty. But they are not going to accept bail at any cost - ten million dollars, twenty million dollars. They say no; at no cost is it possible to take him on bail. We are afraid that they will kill you, they will torture you, they will harass you.

"And they can continue it for years. Your whole movement will be suffering, thousands of sannyasins will be suffering. We have seen: there are many sannyasins who have not eaten anything since you have been in jail. So just think of those sannyasins, the people who love you, and accept on the two minor points."

Seeing the whole situation, just for you I have accepted that I am guilty. And you can see the cunningness of the government: they had said that they would simply release me and keep me out of America for five years, but once I accepted the guilt, the judge immediately gave the fine of four hundred thousand dollars - and five years of no entry to America.

These four hundred thousand dollars were not part of the negotiations, but the judge was not part of the negotiations either - although he knew exactly on which points I was willing to accept that I was guilty. There were thirty-four points, but only on those two points on which I had agreed with the attorneys. The judge asked, "Do you feel you are guilty or not?" He was certainly aware of the negotiations, and the people who were negotiating were aware that four hundred thousand dollars would be the fine. All these liars, cunning people...

No, my people do not know the whole story yet. I am going to tell them. That is one of the purposes of my world trip, so everybody becomes aware of the ugly face of the American government. It is a fascist government. It tried to kill me.

Afraid that if bail was granted and having no chance to win in the trial, they had put a bomb in the room where I was to come back from the court to collect my clothes. But they missed by a little bit:

they had no idea at what time I would be coming, and it was a time bomb.

The whole area was empty; everybody knew something was going to happen. Even the person who brought me in said to me, "You sit down, and I will be coming soon with the signature of my boss. Then I can release you." He locked the door from outside, and even he disappeared. And from everybody's face, the person who brought me to the jail, the person who said, "I am going to take the signature..." I could see that there was some conspiracy behind it.

But that's what I say: my trust in existence... They defeated their own conspiracy. They could not manage to keep me there for as long as they had set the time on the bomb. They had to release me, and immediately after my release the bomb was found exactly under my chair.

I am going to tell everybody - not only my people but all the people; not only non-Americans, but Americans too through the news media - that they are living under another fascist regime, under another Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan, who is millions of times more powerful than poor old Adolf Hitler...

My whole effort will be to expose America completely. It is not against the American people - I love them, they are beautiful - it is against the bureaucracy and the politicians. They have to be overthrown. They are the most dangerous people in the world today, because they have the greatest power, and I don't think they have any brains.

I am reminded of a story...

It must have been an American politician whose brain was being operated on - brain surgery. They had taken out his whole brain, and they were working on it in the next room while he was silently sleeping. At that very moment a man came into the room and said, "What are you doing here? Have you not heard? - you have been chosen for president!"

He said, "My God, and I am lying down here!" He stood up, went out of the hospital...

When the surgeons came they could not find him. They said, "What has happened?"

Somebody told them, "He has been chosen for president."

They said, "But the brain is still here." They phoned the president, "Please come back and take your brain."

He said, "As long as I am president I don't need it!"

HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW, PERSONALLY, AFTER ALL THE COMMOTION THAT HAPPENED PRIOR TO YOUR DEPARTURE FROM THE USA?

As far as I am concerned, I simply feel great, just as great as before all the commotion, as great as I was in the commotion. There is no change in my inner consciousness. It is utterly silent and utterly rejoicing, in every situation.

Even the American jailer, after twelve days, had to accept me. He said, "I am an old man and I am just going to be retired soon, but you are my first prisoner - thousands of people have been in this prison - to be going out of the prison looking better, healthier than you entered twelve days ago.

What is the secret?"

I said, "The secret is simple: I enjoyed the whole scene. It was a great learning for me, and all your efforts to harass me..."

They did not allow me to sleep for twenty-four hours in the whole twelve days. They would put me in a cell exactly between two television sets, and the television sets would be going as loud as possible from the early morning till midnight, continuously. And they had made arrangements that after the television sets were silent, then the inmates would start talking from one cell to another - loudly of course, because if you are talking from one cell to another cell, you have to talk very loudly. And this continued till the television sets would start again.

So I said, "It has been a great opportunity for me. I rested, and my rest is something that you cannot disturb. I am the center of the cyclone. And I am looking better because you have been refusing me vegetarian food. You have been telling me that there is no special arrangement, that I have to eat whatsoever is available. I have asked if you can just give me milk, if you can give me fruit or vegetables. You said no, that whatever is available and is given to every prisoner would be given to me.

"So I was not eating, and I saw that the prisoners were more human than the bureaucrats. Seeing the situation, they started bringing their milk, their fruit, and they would tell me, 'Osho, I know they are torturing you. There are fruits, there are vegetables, there is milk. We are given everything, but we can eat meat; there is no problem, you can take....' So I have lost eight pounds in weight, which my personal physician Dr. Devaraj was continuously wanting. That's why I am looking good."

A tremendous feeling has arisen in me that even if you throw me into hell - you have already done that - you cannot disturb my paradise.

Wherever I am, my paradise will be with me.

You can kill me, but you cannot kill my spirit.

QUESTIONS FROM SONNTAGS BLICK, SWITZERLAND AND TEMPO, GERMANY.

Question 6:

Yes, it includes Switzerland - but I will not be circling around Switzerland, I will be coming inside Switzerland.

I have many sannyasins there, and I have something that I would like to see, and that is the Alps mountains. I love the Himalayas; the Alps are something similar - not as high, but still with the same beauty. So I am going to come to Switzerland as soon as the Swiss government gathers some courage against America.

I had asked for a visa, and they informed the ambassador here in Greece, "Keep cool" - as if it is not cold enough in Switzerland! So once the ambassador gets a little warmer, I will be there.

Question 7:

It is only one of the reasons. I have more sannyasins in Germany than in any other country, and this certainly makes the German politicians afraid of me. But the greater fear is that these sannyasins had come to me either in India or in America. There are millions more young people, younger and fresher minds in Germany. If I go to Germany, then the whole youth of Germany is going to be with me.

One thing they understand is that I have some kind of heart-to-heart relationship with the younger generation. I don't have any gap; the generation gap does not exist for me. They don't have any connection with their own youth, and they are afraid that if I come to Germany then thousands more German young people will become sannyasins.

Every nation has certain characteristics which it has developed down the ages: when a German decides to be a sannyasin, you can trust him that he will remain a sannyasin until his last breath.

You cannot hope for that in California. In California everything is a fashion. The Beatles come and they are all mad after them, and within years nobody bothers about them.

The German mind has a certain characteristic of decisiveness. If it decides to be with me, then there is no way for those politicians to prevent it. But they don't understand me.

By creating a law against a man who has never been in Germany, who has never committed any crime against German law, or against any law... I have not even applied for permission to visit Germany and even before that they make a law that I cannot enter Germany.

I have found my own way. I will go around Germany. They can make a law against me going into Germany, but they cannot make a law against Germany coming to me! And their law is going to help me: many more who may not have thought about me have become curious as to why a man who has never been there should be prevented, without any reason and without any cause.

Once I have made a round of Germany, then I am going to tell my German sannyasins to go to the courts. I am not a terrorist; I don't believe in violence. Go to the courts, and drag the government into as many courts as possible. Put thousands of cases against them - and they have no way to win any case. Defeat them, and then I will come to celebrate their defeat.

So now Germany has got into trouble by its own hand; now it is going to become a national movement in Germany. First I will meet my German sannyasins, then they have to fight it in the court, and then I will enter Germany. And I feel a certain affinity for the Germans. They are capable of trust; they are able to devote themselves - even if it is a question of dying for a cause, they will not hesitate.

The German youth made a retarded, mentally sick person, Adolf Hitler, one of the most important figures in history. With me they have an intellectual rapport; with me they have a love affair. I am absolutely certain that not only the youth, but many older people in Germany still have the mind of the young.

I am going to make the whole of Germany my commune!

Question 8:

It is not strange at all. It is a commentary on you. They are bored with your Western lifestyle. They are simply showing their resentment. They are showing that you have led society not towards truth, not towards tranquility, not towards godliness; you have led society towards death.

The punks and the skinheads are simply reminders that you have failed. The Western civilization has come to its end. Naturally it is always the youth who are most vulnerable to what is coming, are more perceptive. They can see that death is coming, that all Western scientists, Western politicians, Western churches are preparing a big graveyard for the whole of humanity. By their outrageous clothing, their ragged clothes, cutting half of their hair, they are simply indicating that there is still time to drop the line that you have been following up to now.

Nothing like this has ever happened in the East, for the simple reason that the East has been searching for something higher - higher than man. The Eastern genius is trying to reach to the stars, and the Western genius is simply preparing for death. These punks and these skinheads are just trying to say something to you; they are symbolic. They know you are deaf, and you will not listen.

Something drastic has to be done so that you start thinking, "What has gone wrong? Why are our children behaving in this way?" What do you want? - you are preparing for nuclear warfare; you are preparing for the death of all life on this earth.

Those people are not strange phenomena: you are a strange phenomenon. They are simpy revolting against you, and it will be good to listen to them. And it will be good to change the way the West has followed up to now, the way of materialism. I am not against materialism, but materialism alone can lead only to death, because matter is dead.

I am absolutely in favor of materialism, if it serves spiritual needs. If materialism is a servant, and not the master, then it is perfectly good. It can do miracles to help humanity, to raise it in consciousness, in rejoicing, to raise humanity beyond humanity.

You are proving Charles Darwin wrong - because monkeys were more intelligent than you. At least they went beyond themselves and created humanity. What have you created? Go beyond yourself and create buddhas; only then will Charles Darwin be true, and the theory of evolution will be true.

Man is simply stuck, and the youth are simply showing you - and they have to be outrageous, because you are not going to listen to logic, to reason, to intelligence.

I am all sympathy for those people; I would like to meet them. I will have immediate rapport with them because I can understand their misery, their anguish. They may prove your saviors. Don't laugh at them; laugh at yourself. They are your children; you have produced them - you must take the responsibility.

A father is known by his children, just as a tree is known by its fruits. If the fruits turn out to be poisonous, then are you going to condemn the fruits or condemn the tree? You are the tree - and those insane looking young people are the fruits. Somewhere YOU are responsible. They are a question mark on you. Think about them sympathetically.

My own understanding is that the West has come to an end. Unless a tremendous movement of spirituality spreads over the Western world, there is no way to save it - and that's what I am trying to do.

My sannyasins are also young; if they were not sannyasins, perhaps they would have been punks, they would have been skinheads. But they have found a way to live on higher levels of being. They are also in revolt; but their revolt is not reaction, their revolt is revolution. They are trying to live a life of peace, love, silence, light.

But it is strange: my sannyasins are being beaten or thrown out of jobs; their communes are destroyed - and what have you been doing about punks and skinheads? You seem to be unconsciously supportive to them, because at least they are following the same line as you are on. The sannyasins have dropped out of your heritage and your way of life. They have chosen a new way of life.

Unless you understand that the West is in urgent need of a new way of life, more and more outrageous reactions will be there around you, and you will be responsible for it.

Question 9:

The reality is bitter, but it has to be understood. The reality is that marriage is an artificial institution; all relationships are artificial inventions of man.

Love is a fleeting moment, unless you reach to a different stage of love, where love is no more a relationship but a state of being. But that has happened only to very few people in the whole history of man.

Man comes from animals. To understand the situation you will have to look at animals. They don't have any relationship; they don't have any marriage. Man still carries the heritage of that long past in his unconscious. He does not want to be married; he does not want to be caught into a relationship.

He simply wants to love, and he wants to love as many people as possible. And nothing is wrong in it - it is natural.

A fully grown-up society will allow its people to love whoever they feel like loving, to live with someone as long as love lasts. After that, even for a single moment to be together is hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is boring, tiring.

The only problem in the past was the children. That can be solved in a different way. For one thing, the world is already much too overpopulated. If no children are born for thirty years, there will be no harm; in fact it will be a great blessing. Secondly, now the pill is available. The pill is the greatest revolution in human history - not the Russian revolution, not the French revolution. Those are just soap bubbles compared to the revolution that the pill has brought, because the pill has made woman equal to man.

That was the only trouble, that the woman had to be pregnant, carry the child for nine months in her womb, was unable to work - and man took advantage of this situation. He made her dependent, and he kept her continually pregnant. Her whole life was nothing but a kind of child-producing factory.

She was not allowed to be educated; she was not allowed to be financially free; she was not allowed to move in the society. She was imprisoned in the house with the children and the kitchen.

For thousands of years, millions of women have died under man's inhumanity, and we have not even made a memorial in the name of the unknown woman who has suffered for so long.

The pill makes the woman equal to man.

Now there is no need for her to be pregnant.

So first the pill will be helpful. People can move easily, change their partners as many times as they want. That will remove a great psychological tension and burden from their minds. What can you do if you see a beautiful woman? You would like to be with her, but your Xanthippe is behind you. She will kill you. You cannot even look at the other beautiful woman. But she will come in your dreams...

and if you see something beautiful, I don't see you can do anything but enjoy, play, have a taste of that beauty. It is simply natural.

People should change.

They can have relatedness, but no relationship.

It will be moment to moment, no lifelong affair. If it continues beautifully, nobody is trying to separate you. But if it has become boring - you have explored the woman and her beauty, she has explored you; now both know each other's topography, geography and everything. Now again and again to read the same geography book...

If people get bored and start throwing the book, out of reaction - because you don't allow them and they are not articulate enough to express their real desire - they become punks and they become skinheads. They wear rubber clothes, and they do all kinds of stupid things, outrageous, just to wake you up, to say, "Things are not going well."

The pill has given tremendous freedom. If you decide to have a child, then you should ask the medical board: should you go to the scientists to find out whether a child conceived between you and your beloved will be healthy, talented, a genius. Unless you have permission from the community you should not produce a child.

Simple arrangements can be made.... Just like you have blood banks, so you can have sperm banks.

You can demand of the medical profession, "I want a child like Albert Einstein or Yehudi Menuhin or Pablo Picasso." And they can manage very easily with computers to look for the right sperm.

The man's work in producing the child is not much; it can be done by just an injection. You can go on making love as fun, as joy, as play; it is no longer a burden on you, and no longer a biological enforcement on you. Society slowly, slowly can choose the best kind of people to live on the earth, and if two persons separate who have children, then the children should belong to the commune, to the community. They should not belong to the families, because families cannot exist anymore.

In a shifting world of relationships, families cannot exist. But everybody has to contribute to the commune, because all the children are the commune's children; it does not matter who produced them. Perhaps the name of the father will never be known - there is no need. The name of the mother should be known; that's enough. For all legal paperwork you write your mother's name.

You can see your father, you can see your mother; you can be with them. But children will be raised up by the commune, in commune hostels, in commune schools. Then the whole problem disappears, and the children will be better, healthier, more talented, more self-confident, more self- respectful.

And the children will not be Christian, they will not be Hindu, they will not be Mohammedan; they will be simply pure human beings. If in their latter life they start searching for truth, they can choose any way they like. All ways are available for them. There is no need to enforce from the very beginning that you are a Mohammedan, you are a Christian. It is ugly, it is fascist.

Even for political voting you give twenty-one years for a person to be mature enough - and for religion you don't give even twenty-one days. The moment the child is born he is immediately circumcised; he becomes a Jew - without the consent of the child, without any understanding on the part of the child.

If twenty-one years are needed for politics, perhaps forty-two years will be the right age for a person to choose the path for his spiritual development. That may be maturity enough; that will dissolve all unnecessary conflicts of religions, conversions, colors, nations - and it will give immense freedom to every person to be natural.

You are living in an unnatural way; the pressure is too much. If German youth is feeling that nothing is working, German youth is right. Always listen to the younger people. They can see better because they are fresher; they can understand better because they are not burdened with the past as much as you are.

This will dissolve many things - for example jealousy. If there is no family and no permanent bondage of relationship, jealousy has no reason to exist. People will be more familiar, and it is certainly more joyous to make love to a stranger than to a person you are making love to every day. Only idiots can go on making love to the same person their whole lives.

The more intelligent you are, the more you want some new adventure. And there is nothing wrong in it; it is your life - you have to decide about it.

Question 10:

I don't think the proverb is right. It should be about Americans, not about Germans.

The poor Germans have other things to suffer, other proverbs, but this is absolutely irrelevant. I can certainly say the American goes to sleep thinking of money, and wakes up thinking of money - and he has more money than anybody else in the world. But this is a strange law that the more you have, the more you want.

In India we have a small story...

A king was very puzzled because a man, a barber, used to come to massage him, to shave him every morning, and he was always happy - he had never seen him sad. The man lived just opposite the king's palace. He used to get one gold coin every day, which was enough in those days to live for the whole month. So the poor man was living luxuriously... every day one gold coin.

In the night he would play on his flute, and the king would hear the sound of the flute. His problem was, "I have everything, and this man gets only one coin every day; he is so happy and I am so tense, so worried. Where is the problem?"

He asked his prime minister, an old man. The old man said, "You wait just a few days, and you will know the reason." And the prime minister threw a bag full of ninety-nine gold coins into the barber's house. The next day the barber came, but he was not the same man. He was looking sad. The king said, "What is the matter? Are you sick or something?"

He said, "No, I am not sick, but a great problem has arisen. Some stupid guy has thrown a bag into my house with ninety-nine gold coins, and he has created problems in my life."

The king said, "But what is the problem?"

He said, "The problem is that now my mind says to save the coin today: don't eat, don't waste it; at least make the bag complete, one hundred coins... So today I am going to fast, and you will not hear my flute tonight. And I am worried because that same mind is saying to me continuously: Now you cannot go on living the way you were living. Once in a while you have to save... one hundred, then one hundred and one, then one hundred and two, and where will it end? - it has finished me."

The more money you have, the more you want.

The more power you have, the more you want.

No, about Germans that is not true. About Germans something else is true...

If you tell a joke to an Englishman, he laughs twice: first he laughs just to be polite, and in the middle of the night again he laughs when he gets it. If you tell the joke to a German, he laughs only once - because everybody else is laughing. If you tell a joke to a Jew, he does not laugh at all. On the contrary, he says, "Shut up. This is an old joke. Moreover you are telling it all wrong."

That I can understand. But this proverb is certainly not true about Germans. Jokes they cannot understand; they are too serious people for that. They don't have a sense of humor.

One of my old sannyasins, Haridas is a German. He lived with me for almost sixteen years, and still he asked others why people were laughing - "I missed the joke!" The trouble with jokes is you cannot explain them. If you explain them their whole point is lost. Either you get it or you don't get it, there is no explanation.

Question 11:

It is better than being alcoholics.

They are healthy people; they love work. And work is a joy if you are healthy, creative. It does not tire you; in fact, it nourishes you.

Work only tires you if you don't want to do it, if you are lazy. Then the Germans would not be workaholics. But in fact, the whole world should learn from Germans to be workaholics, because it is work that can change the whole shape of things, not lazy people.

I am reminded of two lazy people lying down under the shade of a tree. It was a beautiful mango tree, and the mangoes were ripe. One mango fell by the side of one man, and he said to the other, "Can you put that mango into my mouth?"

The other said, "Not me. Where were you when the dog was pissing in my ear? You did not even shoo him away!"

Do you want these kind of people in the world?

No, I am perfectly at ease with workaholics. They create; they make the world beautiful. And man is made in such a way that at least he should work eight hours by nature; only then can he sleep eight hours peacefully. There is a balance. If you have not worked at all, you cannot sleep. Then in the morning you wake up more tired than when you have gone to bed.

A man who works eight hours totally, intensely, need not be worried about sleep, rest, relaxation; need not be worried about thousands of things that are going on in the world. He need not go to the pub to drown his worries; he has none. If he works totally, then all his energies are purified.

Work is a purification process, and it gives him a beautiful sleep, a dreamless sleep. In the morning he is rejuvenated - and back again to create something more.

I would like the whole world to become workaholics.

Question 12:

The German chancellor should be sent to a mental asylum just so they can fix the loose bolts and nuts in his mind.

Question 13:

The leaders are absolutely unnecessary, but for thousands of years they have created a situation in which they have become very necessary. For example, if you want to be religious, you have to go to the church. I don't see the point. You should go to the sea, you should go to the trees, you should go to something close by which is alive and existential. In the church everything is dead.

But just a few days ago the pope declared that it is a sin if you confess directly to God; you have to confess to the priest. The priest has to be the mediator between you and God; you cannot have a direct communication line with God.

These people will not allow humanity to grow up. They keep humanity so it always needs somebody to tell it what to do, what not to do. Otherwise, who are they to give us ten commandments?

In the first world war for the first time intelligence was measured and the intelligence quotient, I.Q., became one of the significant discoveries. But it was shocking to find out that most of the people in the world are just thirteen years old as far as their minds are concerned. They may be seventy years old physically, but mentally they are only thirteen years old.

For centuries man has been kept retarded - not directly, otherwise people would have revolted, but indirectly.

Just look at the biblical story: God says to Adam and Eve, "Don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge."

This is preventing people from growing. This is the beginning of the slavery of man.

It is strange: if God is a father... the father would love his child to be wise, to be a man of knowledge.

But God forbids him to eat from two trees: one is the tree of knowledge, and the other is the tree of eternal life.

It seems to me that the devil is far more benevolent than God. He comes in the shape of a snake and persuades Eve to eat the fruit and tells her the truth. The truth is, "God does not want you to eat the fruits of the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life, because if you eat these two fruits, you will be just like God. And he is a jealous God; he does not want you to become gods, he wants you to remain obedient, retarded children."

His argument is absolutely valid. He is the first revolutionary; he is the first blessing to humanity. If the devil had not persuaded Eve, perhaps we would still have been in the garden of Eden, naked, eating grass. Whatever we have - science, technology - is because the devil persuaded Eve, and Eve persuaded Adam.

All the religions in the world have been trying to keep people ignorant. For example, half of humanity, the woman, has been deprived of any education. The woman cannot enter into many religious places; she cannot read religious scriptures.

You will be surprised that all the religious scriptures are in languages which are dead. Hebrew is dead; Sanskrit has never been used by the people, it has never been a living language. It was used only by the priests, and they never allowed anybody else to learn the language. That creates a mystery. People feel they don't know, the priest knows. He knows nothing.

When the VEDAS were translated, it was found that almost ninety-eight percent is just rubbish. The priests in India were against translating the VEDAS into any other language, and you can understand why. They knew that what is written there is so stupid that there is no question of spirituality in it.

Political leaders don't want people to be intelligent; hence, educational systems have been created all around the world which create clerks, postmasters, stationmasters - not revolutionaries. The whole education system around the world is geared in such a way that it does not increase your intelligence, it only fills your memory system. These are two different things, and you can see it.

There have been people of great intelligence, like Albert Einstein - but he was not a man of memory.

He would go into his bathroom and tell his wife, "I am just coming in ten minutes" - and six hours would pass and the man was still in his bathtub!

One of my friends, Dr. Rammanohar Melia was visiting. Albert Einstein's wife was a little embarrassed; she said, "Forgive me. I have to interrupt him, this is too much. He said ten minutes and now six hours... and you have been waiting for six hours."

She knocked on the door, and Einstein said, "Has ten minutes passed? Why have you disturbed me? I was playing with soap bubbles in my bathtub."

Playing with soap bubbles in his bathtub he had discovered many great theories about stars, because that was the most relaxed moment. And when you are most relaxed, intelligence is at its peak. When there is too much memory, intelligence is suppressed.

All our educational systems are systems of feeding you the way a computer is fed. All your examinations are not examinations of intelligence, they are examinations of your memory, how much you remember.

People have been kept by religions and by politicians, by educationists, remaining childish. It helps to enslave them easily, it helps their vested interests - and these people are always in need of leaders. They cannot go anywhere else. And nobody seems even offended when a man like Jesus says to the people, "I am your shepherd and you are my sheep."

Not a single person stands up and says, "Please don't insult us. You are proclaiming yourself the shepherd and you are reducing human beings into sheep." And not only at that time, but for two thousand years Christian priests, bishops, cardinals, popes have been repeating the same thing:

"Jesus is your shepherd and you are his sheep." Nobody has the guts to say, "I am a man; I am not a sheep. Men don't need shepherds."

There is absolutely no need of leaders in any field - but for that we will have to change the whole educational system, the whole religious indoctrination, the whole political structure.

Right now, politics is the only profession where no qualification is needed. Any idiot who is stubborn enough, has no sense of shame, has no sense that what he is saying he cannot fulfill, can lie very easily, is a hypocrite, is pushy enough... will become a politician, will be in a high post.

I know one man in India who became education minister of the central government, and he himself was absolutely uneducated. His only education was that he could sign his name.

In any profession some qualification is needed. If we want to change the world and we want people to be free from the burden of the leaders, that simply means we will have to change everything from scratch.

I am in favor of meritocracy. A man who is himself uneducated becoming education minister of a country is simply hilarious. India has more than one hundred universities, one hundred vice- chancellors, hundreds of great scholars and experts, educationists; only they should be allowed to stand for a post which is going to be in the ministry for education.

I have seen ministers who know nothing of economics and they are finance ministers. These people would not like the general masses to be intelligent enough to see what is going on behind the curtain, how they are being exploited, cheated.

I absolutely agree: there is no need for any leaders.

I am not a leader.

I am not a master; nobody is my disciple.

I am not a shepherd and nobody is a sheep to me.

My sannyasins are my friends, my fellow travelers. I respect them as much as they respect me. I love them more than they love me. And I don't see any difference: they are potentially everything that is possible for human beings; their potential has just not been used.

It is the first time in the world that anybody is saying, "My people are my friends." I am not obliging my sannyasins; they are obliging me by accepting me as their friend. They have every right to reject me.

Question 14:

Love is included. It is part of beauty, that's why it has not been named separately. It is the eyes of love that discover beauty; it is the beauty that provokes love in you. They are one phenomenon.

Question 15:

No two persons are similar; it is against the law of nature. Nature produces only unique individuals.

Ronald Reagan is Ronald Reagan. The German chancellor is the German chancellor. There is no similarity.

Only one connection I can see: the German chancellor is just a puppet of Ronald Reagan.

Question 16:

I just said that the German chancellor is a puppet of Ronald Reagan, and the German government is following on the lines of the American government. It is fascist.

But because of the second world war and Adolf Hitler, the word 'fascism' or 'nazism' has become so condemned that the German government has to wear masks in the same way as the American government is doing; it has to pretend to be democratic.

In fact, it is very difficult for any government to be democratic, for the simple reason that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Question 17:

It is true about everybody, not only about Germans. Everybody is dreaming, planning and wasting the moment in which he could have lived. Many of the people realize that they were alive only when they die - but then it is too late.

So don't unnecessarily condemn Germans; it is a human phenomenon, the same all over the world.

Everybody is planning for the next year. There are even people in the East who are planning for the next life! But nobody is worried about this moment, which is the only reality.

If you want to live, live now and here.

If you don't want to live, you can go on creating as many dreams and fantasies as possible. All fantasies, all dreams, all projections for the future are nothing but slow suicide.

Question 18:

The West is absolutely ignorant of a science called meditation; hence these kinds of problems arise.

These are not real problems, these are only symptoms. These are symptoms of a non-meditative mind.

If you can meditate, if you can create a little distance between your mind and your being, if you can see and feel and experience that you are not your mind, a tremendous revolution happens within you. If you are not your mind, then you cannot be your jealousy, then you cannot be your sadness, then you cannot be your anger.

Then they are just there, unrelated to you; you don't give any energy to them. They are really parasites who have been living on your blood, because you were identified with the mind. Meditation means disidentification with the mind.

It is a simple method, not something complex that only a few people can do. Just sit silently at any time, any moment, and watch. Close your eyes and watch what is going on. Just be a watcher.

Don't judge what is good, what is bad, this should not be, this should be...

No judgment, you are simply a watcher.

It takes a little time to attain to pure watchfulness. And the moment you are a pure watcher, you will be surprised that the mind has disappeared.

There is a proportion: if you are only one percent a watcher, then ninety-nine percent is mind. If you are ten percent a watcher, then ninety percent is mind. If you are ninety percent a watcher, then only ten percent of the mind is left.

If you are one hundred percent a watcher, then there is no mind - no sadness, no anger, no jealousy - just a clarity, a silence, a benediction.

Question 19:

It is still valid - but that does not mean that no changes will be happening.

In fact, changes happen only when something is valid. Unreal things don't change; only real things change. A plastic flower remains always the same, but a real rose changes.

Whatever I have said about the commune is true, still true. And the changes that are happening are making the commune wider, bigger, more open.

My effort now is that the commune should not be open only to the sannyasins. It should be open to anybody who has a rapport with me - he may not be a sannyasin; who has a feeling for me - he may not be a sannyasin.

My effort is not to create an alternate society; my effort is to change the whole of society into a vast world commune. So many more changes will be happening, many more doors will be opened so that slowly, slowly I can take the whole world in. I don't want anybody to be miserable and left out in the cold, while my commune is so warm, so alive, so rejoicing. I don't want anybody to miss this opportunity.

Question 20:

Just nothing!

Question 21:

The death of an enlightened being like J. Krishnamurti is nothing to be sad about, it is something to be celebrated with songs and dances. It is a moment of rejoicing.

His death is not a death. He knows his immortality. His death is only the death of the body. But J.

Krishnamurti will go on living in the universal consciousness, forever and forever.