Truth is a search, not a faith

Question 1:

I do not believe in nations. The whole of humanity is one. I am going to Italy because Italy is there.

Question 2:

I know everything about the Italian people. My first Western sannyasins were Italians; they introduced me to the West.

I have thousands of sannyasins in Italy. They have a special quality to them; they are the most lively people on the earth, most earthly, most loving, most nonserious. To me, seriousness is sickness, and nonseriousness is a religious quality.

I don't know anything about Italy because I have never been there. But to know the people is to know their land, is to know the earth where they have been born, is to know the trees, is to know the rivers and the mountains - because they carry the taste of their atmosphere with them. Italy must be a very living, very alive, very young, youthful country.

One thing I know was that in the past Italy had one of the biggest empires in the world - the Roman empire. The Romans were the only people on the whole earth who were pagans - and I love pagans.

A pagan is a person who does not believe in hocus-pocus gods, in heaven or hell, who does not bother about what is going to happen after death, who lives here and now, squeezing the juice of every moment to its fullest.

The pagan knows how to live.

And one who knows how to live automatically knows how to die. His life is beautiful, his death is beautiful.

But a calamity happened...

The Roman emperor ordered the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The order was executed by his viceroy in Judea, Pontius Pilate. He was not interested at all in crucifying Jesus Christ, but the Jews were demanding it, and it had become such a big problem that he was not ready to lose the empire to save a single man. But he was not aware about the dialectics of existence, the dialectics of history.

He crucified Jesus, not knowing that his own country would become the citadel of Christianity.

Pontius Pilate crucified Jesus. He continued to crucify other Christians, and the ultimate result was that the whole of the Roman people started feeling guilty: "We are crucifying innocent people. These people may have crazy ideas, but everybody has the right to have crazy ideas. They are not harming anybody. They are talking about God; they are talking about the only begotten son of God - so let them talk..."

But because the Christians were crucified, the pendulum moved. People became more and more sympathetic to the innocent people who were being murdered, and the ultimate result was that Rome became the very citadel of Christianity. The day Jesus Christ was crucified by the order of the Roman emperor, unknowingly he had crucified the whole of the Roman civilization.

Italy became Christian out of guilt, not out of any conversion. So they are superficially Christian; they pay tribute to the pope, but basically they are pagans. The real Romans, the authentic, real human beings... I am not going to Italy to meet the Christians, I am going to discover the pagans who have been lost behind the facade of Christianity.

I am a pagan, and my sannyasins are pagan.

We believe only in reality, not in fictions.

My going to Italy is significant. Losing the pagans from the world has been an immense loss. We have lost some song, some dance from human life. Some dimension has completely closed.

Italy needs to be freed from Christianity; only then will it find its soul, its original face.

Question 3:

Yes, it is true.

Question 4:

On that point he was wrong! - because to travel by a donkey is to torture a living being, and to travel by a Rolls Royce is not torturing anybody; it is absolutely nonviolent!

Question 5:

I am not especially against the Catholic religion, I am against all organized religions; the Catholic religion is only one of them.

I am against all organized religions, without any exception, for the simple reason that truth cannot be organized. It is not politics, it is a love affair between the individual and existence; you cannot organize it. No priests are needed, no theologians are needed, no churches are needed.

Is not the sky full of stars enough for you to appreciate and admire, and fall down on the earth in prayer and in thankfulness to existence? Are not flowers enough, trees and birds, mountains... a sunrise, a beautiful sunset?

Existence surrounds you with so much beauty, and you create a small prison and call it a church.

And you think going into the church is being religious...?

Listening to the sermon of a man who has not realized anything - he may be a scholar, but he is not enlightened; he speaks within quotes, but he cannot speak on his own authority - is simply wasting time. Find somebody who has found the truth, and be with him. Drink his presence; look into his eyes. Feel his heart and let your heart beat in rhythm with his heart - and perhaps you may have some taste of religion.

But religion cannot be organized.

Truth cannot even be expressed. What to say about organizing it? - it is inexpressible. Those who have known it have talked about and about, but they have never been able to exactly say it. They talk about and about in the hope that perhaps by chance you may get the knack. It is not an art which can be taught; it is something more like a disease which can only be caught.

When you are near a man who knows the truth, perhaps you may catch the disease.

All the mystics of the world, of all the ages, are agreed on one point, that truth cannot be brought down to the level of language. All the theologians are doing just the opposite. All the mystics are agreed that there is no way of organizing truth, because it is purely an individual affair. Do you have organizations for love? And love at least involves two persons; it is interpersonal.

Religion is absolutely personal. It does not involve anybody else but you.

You need not be a part of a crowd: Catholic, Protestant, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist.

All these crowds have destroyed the possibility of man attaining truth, because they have given a fallacious idea that you need not search: "Jesus knows - you simply believe in Jesus. Buddha knows it - you simply believe in Buddha. You don't have to do anything."

They have made truth so cheap that the whole world believes and lives in darkness, and lives in a thousand and one lies. Belief in the very beginning is a lie. How can you believe that Buddha has attained truth? How can you believe that Jesus has attained truth? - his contemporaries did not believe him; you are twenty centuries away.

His contemporaries only thought that he was a nuisance. They did not relish his presence; on the contrary, they wanted him to be destroyed. And you know that he knew the truth? On what grounds?

Your belief is just a strategy to deceive yourself. You don't want to take the arduous path of seeking, searching, discovering. It is arduous, because you will have to drop many superstitions, and you will have to deprogram yourself from many conditions of the past which are preventing you from knowing the truth, from knowing yourself. No belief can help, and all religions are based on belief - that's why they are called faiths, and the religious people are called faithful.

Truth is a search, not a faith.

It is an enquiry, not a belief.

It is a question, a quest, and you will have to go a long way to find it. To avoid this long journey you easily become gullible. You easily become victims of anybody who is ready to exploit you. And naturally it feels cozy in a crowd. There are six hundred million Catholics; it feels cozy, and you feel that six hundred million people cannot be wrong. You may be wrong, but six hundred million people cannot be wrong. But everybody in those six hundred million people is thinking the same.

Four hundred million Hindus feel that they are right; otherwise, why should four hundred million believe in their truth? The same is true about Mohammedans, Buddhists and other religions.

The search for truth is a flight of the alone to the alone.

All these religions have made you parts of crowds, dependent on the crowds. They have taken away your individuality, they have taken away your freedom, they have taken away your intelligence. In its place they have given you bogus beliefs which mean nothing.

I am not particularly against the Catholic religion, I am against all religions. My standpoint is that to be religious is a personal experience. A Buddha may have known truth, but the moment Buddha dies his truth disappears like a fragrance. When a flower dies, what happens to the fragrance? It moves into the universal.

It is good that everybody has to find it again and again; otherwise truth would be such a boring thing.

It is an adventure and an ecstasy - and it will remain always an adventure, because it cannot be purchased, it cannot be borrowed, it cannot be stolen, it cannot be believed. There is no other way except seeking it and finding it.

The very seeking is so beautiful. Each moment of it is such a joy, because each moment something falls, drops from your life. And we are surrounded by falsities. On each step some mask drops, and you become acquainted with your original face. And finally, when all that is false has disappeared, you become a light unto yourself, and that is the moment of religiousness.

I would love the whole world to be religious, not under any organized religion, but as an independent search, out of each individual's freedom. Then you will have an authority. Then, whether you say it or not, even your silence will be a sermon, even your gestures will have a grace. Those who are receptive will immediately feel the gravitation of the realized person, the magnetic force in his eyes, in his presence.

There is no need to convert anybody; every conversion is ugly. When you come across somebody who knows, you simply fall in love. It is not a conversion - you cannot do anything else. In spite of you, something goes on pulling you into a new direction, into a new dimension.

Basically I am for freedom of the individual for seeking the truth. Unfortunately, because of this, I have to be against organized religions. But that is not my joy - just the dirty work I have to do.

Question 6:

My whole life I have enjoyed troubles. And I will love every trouble that can be caused by my opposition to organized religions and the so-called bogus leaders.

But I know Italians more intimately than the Polack pope. They will be the last to cause any trouble for me. They are such loving people, so nice. I like everything about them except their spaghetti; that I hate. But I don't think people are going to create trouble for me just because I hate spaghetti.

Question 7:

Not only had I challenged him for a public discussion on fundamental questions of religiousness, I had opposed the Hindu chauvinistic people who were opposing him. I was the only one in the whole of India who raised his voice to say that the pope should not be opposed in such a way, that this is ugly.

The better and more human way is to invite him respectfully to public debates, wherever he goes.

India has thousands of years' experience in argumentation. There is no problem in arguing about fundamental questions, but throwing stones, shouting, screaming, protesting... All these are ugly things. I hope the pope will remember, when I come to Italy, that I was the only one who was opposing the people who were opposing him in these inhuman ways.

The fundamental questions I want to discuss publicly - amongst his own people, in his own citadel, in the Vatican - are very simple. The fundamental questions of religions are God... I want to discuss God, and I want to discuss the devil. Just today I have been informed that he has proclaimed that the devil is not a fiction but a reality. I would like to see the reality.

You will be surprised to know that there are religions in the world which don't have any devil: Taoism in China has no devil; Jainism in India has no devil; Buddhism has no devil. But the most surprising thing for you will be that all these religions don't have God either. So there is a certain relationship between God and the devil.

God and the devil cannot exist separately. If one is accepted, the other has to be accepted. You cannot think of God without the devil; you cannot think of heaven without hell. The polar opposite is absolutely necessary. One lie leads to another lie. Even God's reality is not proved, and the pope is proclaiming the reality of the devil. The reason is, if the devil is unreal, then God cannot be real.

The devil is the other side of the same coin, of the same fiction.

I would like to discuss with him if truth can be expressed. If truth cannot be expressed in words, then no scripture can be holy. I would like to discuss THE HOLY BIBLE, which has five hundred pages of sheer pornography. Just because it is in THE BIBLE, pornography becomes holy?

I would like to discuss meditation with him, because Christianity knows nothing about meditation.

The religions that believe in the fiction of God have missed the most fundamental thing about religion - meditation. God-oriented religions have created prayer. Prayer is addressed to God. Prayer has always to be addressed to somebody; you cannot just pray. You cannot say, "To whomsoever it may concern..."

Meditation is a totally different world. It needs no God. It is not prayer; it is not addressed to anyone.

It is a search within. You are, you are alive, you are conscious, but you are not aware what this consciousness is.

Meditation is the way to know what this consciousness is. And once you come to know what this consciousness is, you have found a master key, because the same consciousness exists all over the universe. There is no God, but the universe is fully conscious; it is pure consciousness.

I would like to ask him about the Christian trinity, how they have invented it. The father is there, the son is there, but where is the mother? And what kind of guy is this holy ghost? Just to insult women they have not given a place in the trinity for a woman.

There are many problems which are facing the world. The population increase is facing the world, and the pope and his other puppets are teaching against birth control. They are creating more and more poverty, more and more orphans. It is a strange game.

On the one hand they are creating more poverty, more orphans, more sickness, more death, and on the other hand they are opening hospitals for the sick people and orphanages for the orphans. And behind the scene the reality is that they are converting the poor people to Catholicism, just because they can provide bread and butter for them.

This is insulting the very dignity of human beings. You are purchasing their souls just by giving them bread and clothes, and you are the cause of their poverty. And you go on insisting that to use birth control methods is against God. Where is it written in your HOLY BIBLE that to use birth control methods is against God? And where is it written that to use airplanes is not against God?

You are using every technology that science has given to you. But just about humanity, you don't want them not to be poor - you don't want that there should be no orphans, because without orphans, what will Mother Teresa do? Who is going to give her the Nobel prize? For the Nobel prize orphans are needed. For the orphans the pill has to be condemned, birth control has to be condemned.

Now in India Christianity has become the third greatest religion. And who are the people who have become Christians? - not a single brahmin, not a single cultured, educated or rich person.

The beggars, the dying, the starving, the poor people who have no future - these are becoming Christians. Do you think they are choosing your religion because of some religious quest, or for some material gain?

And why are you interested? Just to increase your numbers, because numbers have power - it is a whole politics of numbers - you are teaching people ugly things.

I was talking to a bishop, and I asked him, "How do you know that God is against birth control? He never revealed it to Jesus Christ. He never revealed it to any other prophet; he never revealed it to any other saint. How have you come to the conclusion...? In fact, seeing that God has only one son, it is enough proof that he follows birth control; otherwise, in eternity he would have created so many orphans that you would have run out of Nobel prizes!"

Perhaps that is the reason why he does not allow woman in the trinity. She must be kept somewhere in the house, hiding. But she is not allowed in the open, in public, because women are strange creatures. If you have a son, they nag you, "We need a daughter also." If you have a daughter, they nag you, "We have absolutely to have a son." If you have a son and daughter, then too the woman says, "Who knows, one of them may die. To be on the safe side, let us have at least three."

But God has only one begotten son. And you are teaching in poor countries like India that birth control methods are a sin.

Thirty years ago, when I started talking to people, I started telling them about birth control and its methods. I was stoned. Three times attempts on my life have been made because I am "destroying people's morality"; I am teaching things "against their religion."

When I started, India's population was four hundred million. Now India's population is nine hundred million. Five hundred million people have been added in thirty years. The country was poor even then. And the mathematicians and the economists were thinking five years ago, that by the end of the century India would have a population of one billion. But now they have to change it, the population is growing faster than they can calculate.

Now they have come up with a new estimate: by the end of the century India will have not only one billion people, but one billion and eight hundred million people - almost two billion people.

There is no possibility for this country to survive. Who will be responsible? - God? Jesus Christ...

the pope... Mother Teresa...? Who will be responsible? These are the people who are corrupting the minds of people.

I told the bishop, "It is such a simple matter. You define God as omnipotent, all-powerful; omniscient, all-seeing; omnipresent, everywhere present. If this is true, then what is the fear? He is all-powerful; can he not make a puncture in the rubber? Even a small child can do it! If all the factories go on producing rubbers, and he goes on making punctures... That will be perfectly understandable - that God does not want birth control. But who are you? He is omnipotent; let him do it... you keep quiet."

There are problems in the world, and these people are increasing the problems. They are not helping humanity in any way.

There is AIDS, for which religious people are responsible, because they created the idea of celibacy - which is unnatural. Nobody can be celibate, unless he is impotent. And this has to be understood, that no impotent man in the whole of history has been creative in any dimension: a great musician, a great poet, a great scientist, a great mystic, no - because sex is your energy, your creative energy.

Your greatest creative people are the most sexual people.

Teaching celibacy is against nature. Then putting monks into monasteries and nuns into separate places and not allowing them to meet, you created homosexuality, you created lesbianism. And now homosexuality has brought AIDS.

Every government of the world should declare celibacy a crime. And anybody who preaches celibacy should be immediately imprisoned, because he is the cause of a deadly disease, AIDS which is spreading far and wide. If nuclear weapons don't kill you, AIDS will kill you.

This ugly disease is based on absolutely illogical, irrational ideas. Nature gives you the power to reproduce: is nature against God? This seems to be very strange. On the one hand these people go on saying, "God created the world; God created everything" - so he must have created sex, too.

Or do you make a division that God created man without sex, and the devil added sexuality to man?

But who created the devil? If you think God is the creator of everything, he is the creator of the devil, he is the creator of evil, he is the creator of sex, he is the creator of everything that exists.

It is very strange that God creates sex and his representatives are against sex - "People should be celibate." They do not understand even the ABC of physiology, biology, chemistry. A man can take the vow of remaining celibate, but what can he do to change his biology, his physiology, his chemistry? They don't read THE HOLY BIBLE; they don't understand any pope; they don't listen to any garbage. They simply go on doing their work.

Even the monk is creating sex energy, living sperm - and he has only a limited place for them. He is eating, he is breathing, he is doing everything. More and more energy is coming in; the old sperm are in a hurry to get out. Now, you have put the poor man in such a difficult situation, and he cannot do anything about it. You can tell him, "Repeat Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Ave Maria!" - but those sperm don't listen to all these things. They don't believe; they are not believers. They simply want to get out into the air, because they have a very limited life. And they will find a way. If you don't give them a natural way you are creating perversions.

All the perversions are because of your religions.

So I am ready to discuss everything that concerns humanity and its welfare. And I would like his people to be present: his cardinals, his bishops, the people who have chosen him, so they can see that their pope has no answers for anything.

Everything goes on because all religions are in the same boat, so they don't discuss with each other fundamental problems. I don't belong to any religion, so I have nothing to fear.

I don't have any program, any philosophy.

I simply want to deprogram the whole of humanity.

And I do not want man to be reprogrammed again - so man can live in innocence, in joy and peace, without any schizophrenic splits.

Question 8:

How long has Mother Teresa been there? And who was taking care of all these people before her?

And how long is she going to stay alive? Who will take care of these people after her? Rather than depending on Mother Teresas, why don't you stop creating orphans, so there is no need for any Mother Teresa?

What is the need to create orphans when the pill is there? Anybody can distribute the pill to people.

Orphans can be prevented... But Mother Teresa would not like orphans to be prevented.

It happened that one American couple went to Mother Teresa's place in Calcutta. They wanted to adopt a child. They had no children of their own. The clerk, the receptionist said, "We have seven hundred children. You can choose. You just sit down and fill in the form." They filled in the form. The clerk looked at the form and he said, "You wait here. I will come back soon."

He went inside; he never came back. Somebody else came back and said, "Forgive us. Right now we don't have any children."

The couple were puzzled. Just a few minutes before there were seven hundred children, and now they don't have any children. He said, "What happened?"

The man said, "I don't know anything. I know only one thing, that I have been sent to tell you that right now we don't have any children to give to you."

The reason was that in the form he had just filled in he said he was a Protestant Christian. If he had been a Catholic, then there were seven hundred children! He wrote a letter to THE TIMES OF INDIA, and I publicly criticized Mother Teresa. She wrote me a letter explaining why the man was refused. She tried to explain that the man was refused "because we give the children only to those families where their upbringing will not create any conflict."

I wrote back saying, "Then those children should be given back to Hindus, Mohammedans and not to Christians. What right have you got to give them to Catholics? In the first place you should not give them any Catholic preaching. You don't have their consent. They can give you consent only when they are at least twenty-one years of age. You are committing a crime against small babies. It is unforgivable."

She was very angry. She wrote to me, "I don't want to discuss the matter, but I will pray to God to forgive you."

I wrote her my last letter. I said, "This is my last letter, to inform you, firstly, that there is no God - so please don't waste your time in praying. Secondly, without asking my permission, who are you to pray for me? This is interference into my very spirituality. I will sue you in the court!"

These people... Now she has opened an AIDS home in New York. These people are responsible for AIDS; they have created it. This is not service, this is simply punishment. The Vatican should be turned into an AIDS camp. All their monasteries should now be AIDS camps - because they have created it, and they should take the responsibility for it.

This is not service to humanity, this is simply repentance. It will be good if they do it as quickly as possible; otherwise I am going to tell the homosexuals, from all over the world, "Move towards the Vatican. That is your home."

Question 9:

It is perfectly right. I want this earth to be full of rich people and perfect people. I am against disease; I want healthy people. I am against poverty; I want rich people. I am against the uncultured, uneducated; I want educated and cultured people.

I want this earth to be multidimensionally rich so it can enjoy the novels of Dostoyevsky, the music of Mozart, the paintings of van Gogh, the mysticism of Al-Hillaj Mansoor, the dialogues of Socrates, the sermons of Gautam Buddha... There is so much to enjoy and to grow with, but poverty prevents it - which can be immediately removed.

We have enough nuclear power in the world to destroy this whole earth seven hundred times. All this nuclear power can be used for creativity. All poverty can disappear just like a dewdrop in the early morning sun. Our whole scientific genius is involved in creating war machines. That whole genius should be diverted to make man's life richer, healthier.

It is a simple question of deciding that humanity is one, and that there are no nations and there are no religions, and we are together - and there is no question of any war. Seventy-five percent of our energy is wasted by war. In three thousand years we have been in five thousand wars. Anybody looking from another planet will think this earth is just insane. We are continuously either preparing for war or fighting. We do only two things, either fight or prepare. There is no time for anything else:

no time to love, no time to sing, no time to dance, no time to meditate - no time for any of the higher values of life.

The questioner seems to think that it is a great question. It is simply stupid. I am against God because I don't want people's energies wasted for a fiction. I am against poverty because I have seen poverty, and it is inhuman to allow poverty to exist on the earth.

But just the other day it was reported to me that the European Common Market has so many surplus products this year that just to destroy the surplus, two hundred million dollars will be needed - for destruction. It is not the value of the surplus goods; two hundred million dollars is only the cost of destroying it. And they will destroy it. Every year it is going to happen. It has been happening in America, it has been happening in Europe, it has been happening in Russia.

In Ethiopia thousands of people are dying, and you are destroying your surplus products. And in destroying them you are ready to waste two hundred million dollars. These two hundred million dollars would be enough to carry those products to Ethiopia, and save the whole of Ethiopia. But no, it cannot be done. Who cares whether Ethiopia lives or not?

In Russia, a few years back, they were burning wheat in their trains, instead of coal - because they had surplus wheat and it was cheaper than coal. And people were dying in India, in Bangladesh.

They need wheat; they cannot eat coal. And they have coal in Bangladesh.

Cannot we have a little more understanding - that coal from Bangladesh can come to Russia, and wheat can go to Bangladesh? That whatever Ethiopia can give, Ethiopia gives; it has its natural resources. But why waste so much food? And you call this world religious? And you call these people Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians?

I don't see any religiousness anywhere, because I don't see any compassion. I don't see any love.

Question 10:

I don't know anything about Nazi ideology, but if it is similar, it makes no difference. What I am saying is my understanding. If it is similar to some other ideology, it is a coincidence.

I want humanity to be more scientific as far as breeding is concerned. We have been producing too many idiots, retarded people, crippled people, blind people, sick people. And those people are going to suffer for their whole lives. This is not compassion.

There is no need, because each time a man makes love to a woman he releases one million sperm.

Only one sperm, once in a while - not every day - will be able to get to the woman's egg. The remaining one million will die within two hours. Once one sperm has reached the egg, the egg closes, and the remaining ones have nothing to do but die. For two hours they can make their efforts, and within two hours there will be a line of one million soldiers dead.

One does not know, in those one million soldiers, how many Albert Einsteins have died, how many Zorbas have died, how many Socrateses have died. One million is a big number.

A single man, in his whole life, releases billions of living sperm. He alone can fill the whole earth with people. The whole credit goes to the woman... because she can only produce one child in one year. But this child is just accidental. And my feeling is, that amongst one million people who are rushing towards the woman's egg, there is every possibility that a Muhammad Ali may reach first, rather than Albert Einstein!

But we don't need Muhammad Alis. Boxing is such an ugly affair that it should be banned by law. The University of California has been researching for the last year: after each boxing match in California, for the following ten days the crime rates go thirteen percent higher - murders, suicides, rapes. And still boxing continues.

There is every possibility that the humble people - and all great people are humble - will stand aside and let the other go first. And the primitive and the ugly, the political, will not bother at all; they will push their way through and reach the egg first. Why leave it to accident when it is now in our hands to decide who should reach the egg?

The man can simply donate his sperm to the medical lab. They can find the best out of the one million, and just inject the woman. Such a simple affair, and we can raise humanity to really superhuman beings.

Yes, it may sound something like the Nazi idea, but it is not Nazi. It is simple arithmetic, simple science, simply humanistic. We can cancel those people who will be sick, who will be blind, who will be retarded - and we can choose the best.

For thousands of years man has not evolved. We don't know whether Charles Darwin is right or not.

If he is right then it seems millions of years ago a few monkeys really took a quantum leap, became human beings, and since then we have not done anything comparable to that. We are far behind those monkeys who took the quantum leap and became human beings. It is time to take a quantum leap and through science is the only way to do it. Your old methods are bullock-cart methods; they won't help.

So even if any of my ideas coincides with any other ideology, it does not matter. What matters is whether it is logical, rational, scientific, or not. Just by calling names you cannot criticize me. So remember, when you write your article, don't just start saying that I am a fascist or a Nazi ideologist.

That will not be fair to me. Whatever I am saying, I am giving you my argument.

You can argue against my argument. If you have something better you can put it in, but don't try these methods which belong only to third-rate intellects. Call anything Nazi, and people just start thinking it is wrong. You have to prove why I am wrong. You are free to prove me wrong. I would love to listen to the argument that I am wrong, but I have always come across people who simply go on calling names. That is not intelligent. That is not human.

Question 11:

There is no problem. When you fall in love, what do you do? Just fall in love; become a sannyasin - there are no conditions.

And when you want to fall out, there is no need for any divorce. You simply fall out - we say goodbye. We celebrate both the occasions. There are no conditions when you come in. There are no conditions when you leave.

It is your freedom to be part of the movement.

It is your choice not to be part of it.

We respect you and we respect your decision.

Question 12:

What kind of veneration? Just because I am sitting in a chair higher than you...? Tomorrow I can tell them to dig a ditch... then will I be adoring you all? Are you some kind of idiot or what?

Question 13:

I am neither. I am just a visitor... and by chance, just because I have a few beautiful sannyasins here like Amrito, who pulled me here and I could not deny them. In fact, I am incapable of saying no to anybody, so people can take me anywhere they want.

But there is no question of creating another civilization, because there has been no civilization up to now.

And what will I do by making my people pirates? I don't even have pockets. I don't have any bank account. I don't possess anything in this world.

I possess only the love of my people, who are all over the world, and I don't know another treasure greater than that.

Jesus said, "God is love." I don't think it is right - but I can say, "Love is God."