Pope the polack is the antichrist

Question 1:

The pope and other religious leaders of the world are not afraid of terrorists, but they are afraid of me. The reason is that the terrorists cannot destroy their very roots, cannot destroy their very existence. They may kill a few people here and there, but they cannot take away the vested interests totally.

I can do that.

I am a bigger terror to them, although I am not a terrorist. I am absolutely nonviolent.

Their fear is basically because they are standing on fictitious ground. They have no argument for existing anymore; they cannot provide any reason why they are needed. And I can provide every reason why their very existence is a hindrance for human progress, for the coming of a superman.

They are keeping people in every way retarded just so that they can exploit them.

And they have been exploiting for centuries. They have repeated their lies so often that they almost appear as truths.

Man's mind is a very mysterious mechanism: If you go on saying to it something which is absolutely baseless, first it will not listen to it; first it will laugh about it. But if you go on, without bothering about its laughter or ignorance, soon it will become serious: "There must be something in it if the man is so persistent." And if this goes on for centuries, you forget completely that the beginnings of religion are out of fear.

Man started to create a god out of fear - not out of knowledge, not out of love. He was surrounded by wild animals - the most helpless being on the earth. In the night there was darkness and he was continuously in danger of being attacked. So when fire was found for the first time, it became a god - in India they still worship fire - because then man could make a bonfire, a lighted space, and remain close to the fire. Animals are afraid of fire, it was warmer, there was light; there was no fear - animals could come near - naturally, fire became a god.

In the oldest book on the earth, the RIGVEDA, more prayers are devoted to the god of fire than to any other god. Slowly, slowly more and more gods came in. If you want to see the whole scene of gods, you have to look into the ten-thousand-year history of religious development in India, because that is the country where religion first began.

They have thirty-three million gods. Everything that was protective became a god. Everything that they were afraid of, they made a god out of it - as a bribery. They started worshiping clouds, they started worshiping rivers - because rivers were dangerous; floods would come. If they worshiped rivers, then perhaps floods would not come. They started worshiping the sun, because it is the sun, they found, that gives you warmth, life, wakes you up out of the night. The night had been a terror for millions of years.

Religions' origins are in fear.

It is not a coincidence that India is the most ancient religious country - and the most cowardly; for two thousand years they have been slaves. What can people do who are so cowardly that they need thirty-three million gods to protect them? Small groups of people invaded such a big country, which is almost a continent, without any resistence. The fear was great.

The same is true about other religions which came later on: they are based in fear.

Man creates God in his own image. Although THE BIBLE says God created man in his own image, just the opposite is true. And it is so clear: if God created man in his own image, do you think man has anything that can prove that he is the image of God? God is all-powerful, God is everywhere present, God is all-knowing - past, present, future. What qualities do you have?

No, the idea is just wrong.

The reality is, man created God in his own image.

That's why the Chinese god will have a Chinese face; the Hindu god will have a Hindu face, Hindu color; the Japanese god will look Japanese, speak Japanese.

I have heard... after the second world war, one German general and one English general met by coincidence on a beach where they were on a holiday. They became friendly - they were in the same profession of butchering and killing.

The German general asked, "Only one thing I cannot understand: why were we defeated? We were stronger than you."

The English general laughed and said, "I will tell you the reason. We were praying to God for victory."

The German laughed; he said, "That is nonsense, because we were also praying to God for victory."

The Englishman said, "In what language? God understands only English and you must have been praying in German. That shows why you were defeated!"

The pope is certainly afraid. This is not the quality of a religious man - to inform the news media that they should not write either for me or against me, neither positive nor negative; that they should not even mention my name, my presence. Does he think that I need news media for my presence to be felt? His fear is a proof that my presence is already being felt, although I am not there.

He was in India: I welcomed him, and I opposed the Hindu chauvinists who were opposing him in ugly, political ways: protest marches, slogans, throwing stones, preventing his meetings, disturbing his meetings. I was the only person in India who publicly opposed the Hindu chauvinists. I said, "You are doing something ugly. If the pope is not right, invite him - in every city where he visits, be respectful; he is our guest. Welcome him, and challenge him for a discussion on the fundamental matters of religion. That will be more human, more intelligent. And prove to him that he is wrong.

Your stones cannot prove him to be wrong, your protests cannot prove him to be wrong. Your protests and your stones only prove that you are afraid."

I hope the pope will be a gentleman.

He should behave with me the way I behaved with him. But he has already started misbehaving. He should have told the whole press media, "Be present, and we are going to discuss the fundamental matters." It is a question of quest, enquiry into truth. It is not a question of my being victorious or his being victorious - we are negligible. The reality is that the truth should be revealed, that the people should come to understand what is false and what is not false. Invite the people.

This is simply ugly politics to tell the news media... and in Italy almost the whole media is Catholic.

But don't be worried, the media will have to take a standpoint either for or against - nobody can be left in between. And already it has happened....

Before the pope had informed the media, the television company from Italy came to Kathmandu to take my interview. They have done the longest piece ever, a ninety-minute interview, and the director informed me, "I have never seen such a response in my whole life. Thirteen million people saw the interview on the television, and the whole country is divided into two parts. People are fighting in the streets - for and against - in restaurants, everywhere."

He asked me, "Are you some kind of a disaster? - because only when some big disaster happens do so many people look at the television; otherwise, who cares about religion?"

I am certainly a disaster - a disaster to all the religions that exist, because I want to give a totally new dimension to religion.

I want religion to be absolutely unorganized.

It is an individual's personal enquiry.

And only through your personal enquiry can you can come to know the truth of your life, of your existence... and the meaning.

There is no need of any priest to stand in between you and existence. I don't want man to create fictions; I want him to be more scientific, to look for realities.

God is a fiction - existence is a reality.

To me there is no other god than existence, than life, than consciousness. And then you need not go on piling up lies upon lies. First you create God because you have asked a stupid question: Who created the world? The question is stupid, because whoever created it, the question will remain the same, again. Who created THAT personality? So God Number One created the world; God Number Two created God Number One; God Number Three created God Number Two.... It is an endless regress; you can never come to the point where you can find who created it all.

Ask a stupid question, and you will fall into a regress - a simple logical process. And once you receive the answer that God created the world, then you have to define God.

Nobody has seen God - all definitions are inventions. If horses were going to define God he would be a horse, a good Arabian horse. He cannot be a man, certainly not a man, because man has been such a pain in the neck to all the horses that they are fed up; they cannot accept man as a god.

I am reminded of a small child who used to go with his father to the park for a morning walk. There was a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte sitting on his horse, and the child was always enchanted. He looked up, and he asked, "What is it?"

The father explained that it was Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the heroes of history.

Soon the father was going to be transferred to another town. The boy said, "Before we leave, I would like to see Napoleon Bonaparte." The father took him there. With tears in his eyes, the boy said to his father, "Father, I can understand Napoleon Bonaparte is a great hero - but who is that guy sitting on him? That fool, continuously, twenty-four hours a day, is sitting on my Napoleon Bonaparte."

The father could not believe that he was thinking the HORSE was Napoleon Bonaparte! But children have their own visions, their own ideas.

There are three hundred religions in the world, and every religion has a different definition of God.

Certainly, three hundred definitions cannot be true. Yes, three hundred definitions can all be untrue - and they ARE untrue. It is just because you accepted God as the creator that you got into a fix.

Now you have to define God; now you have to say when he created the world.

Christians say he created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born. I assume it must have been Monday, the first of January. But the question arises: before four thousand years ago, for eternity, what was this God doing? He seems to be a really lazy guy! It took eternity for him to decide to create the world, and then he has created this mess!

One of my friends was going on a tour. He had ordered from the tailor a beautiful coat to be made - the winter was coming, and he was in a hurry. He said to the tailor, "Make it in one week's time. And don't be tricky; don't try to find any excuses. In one week's time you have to make the coat."

The man said, "I can make it in one day - but just see outside: God made the world in six days, and what is the world? - it is an utter mess! If I make your coat in one week it will be an utter mess. That will be your responsibility. I am a poor tailor; if God could not manage, how can I manage? Give me time! The coat will be ready when you are back from your trip; then it will be perfect."

One lie needs to be supported by another lie. In how many days did God create the world? In six days, because the seventh day he got tired - great God! Omnipotent, all-powerful God gets tired in six days - spent, finished! Since then we have not heard anything about him. Since then he has been resting; the Sunday does not end at all.

And all these things are against scientific investigations. This earth itself is at least three million years old, nothing to say about the universe. The universe is eternal; it has always been there, changing into new forms. Every day new stars are born, every day old stars die. There is no beginning and there is no end; hence the question of any creator does not arise at all.

But you create a lie; you make churches and temples and synagogues around that lie; you create bishops, archbishops, popes, to be mediators between you and the lie, and you waste your life praying to something which does not exist at all.

All the religions have been destructive to your religiousness. They have been destructive to your search for truth. They have been teaching you to believe, not to enquire. They have been giving you ready-made formulas so you need not bother about any individual enquiry.

Leo Tolstoy has a story, a beautiful story, of three villagers - uneducated, uncultured. They lived by the side of a lake in total isolation, under a tree. They were becoming more and more famous as saints.

The archbishop of the Russian Orthodox church of course was angry, because in Christianity you can be a saint only if you are certified by the pope. It is hilarious that a saint needs to be certified - as if it is also a title, an honorary degree that has to be conferred on the man. The very word 'saint' in English comes from 'sanction'; it has to be sanctioned, certified.

These three people were not certified and they had become saints. People were going to them in thousands and they were not coming to the archbishop. He was really pissed off!

One day he could not contain himself. He took a motor boat and went across the lake. Those three poor people fell at his feet and they said, "Why did you have to make this long, tedious journey? You could have informed us and we would have come."

He was cooled down a little, seeing their simplicity. But he said, "Do you think you are saints?"

They said, "We don't know what a saint means."

He asked, "Why do people come to worship you?"

They said, "That is a problem to us. We don't want them to - that's why we have come far away from the village to live here in isolation. But people are crazy; they go on coming here. And we go on saying that we don't know anything; we are just simple people, poor people."

Now the archbishop was back into his daily posture of being the archbishop. He said, "Then listen; first tell me, what is your prayer?"

All the three looked at each other and said, "You tell him."

The archbishop said, "Anybody can say, there is no question - just tell me what the prayer is."

They said, "We are very embarrassed because we don't know any prayer. Not knowing any prayer we have created our own - please forgive us. Our prayer is: 'God, you are three; we are also three - have mercy on us.' That's all - longer prayers we cannot remember. It is simple and meaningful to us: 'You are three, we are three - have mercy on us.'"

The archbishop had to laugh. He said, "This is a strange kind of prayer! I will tell you the prayer authorized by the church, and you forget this prayer. This is not prayer, this is all nonsense!"

They said, "You can teach us; we are available. The only difficulty is, it should not be too long, there should not be big words; otherwise we will forget it."

He told them the whole prayer. They were very sad, and they said, "Please repeat it one time more - it is very difficult to remember. But we will try it in three parts: one part one man will remember; the other part the other man will remember; the third part the third man will remember. This way we will make it. You repeat it at least one time more."

The archbishop repeated the prayer one time more. They all three touched his feet, and he greatly enjoyed it. He was thinking that there was going to be an encounter, but these were poor people, ignorant. He went in his boat, very happy that he had done a virtuous act of transforming three idiots to the right way of religion.

In the middle of the lake he was surprised; all three were coming, running on the water! He was so afraid - this time he REALLY pissed! He was trembling, "My God, what is happening."

They reached the motorboat and said to the archbishop, "Please, one time more! We have forgotten the prayer."

The archbishop said to them, "You forget my prayer; you continue your own. I was wrong to disturb you, please forgive me. Just go back to 'You are three, we are three - have mercy on us.' From today I am also going to do your prayer, because I am also three - I, my wife, my son. It fits and it is simple - and it works!"

Religions should be a simple, human, individual affair, like love. You don't have organizations for love; you don't create churches and synagogues and temples and mosques for love. But in love at least two persons are involved - in prayer you are absolutely alone.

It is the beauty of aloneness, the purity of aloneness, the unpolluted serenity, silence of aloneness in which you become aware of the tremendous beauty of existence, of the great blissfulness that surrounds you. But you were missing it because your eyes were covered by Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism.

I want to give you back your eyes.

And I want you to take the responsibility of finding the truth yourself.

Do not depend on anybody else, because every dependence is a slavery. And the people who want you to depend on them - like the pope wants you to depend on him - are simply creating, in the name of religion, a vast empire of slaves.

Just a few days ago I saw his proclamation: "I have heard that a few Catholics are confessing to God directly. That is a sin. Nobody can confess directly, can be in communication directly with God; he should go via the priest." Strange, you cannot even confess to God directly! The reality is that because there is no God, if you start enquiring individually, you will find that God is the greatest lie that has been told to everybody. A priest is needed to guard that lie.

And the confession to the priest is a political strategy. You go on telling your sins to the priest - do you know what it means? It means you are making a man powerful enough over you so you cannot leave the Catholic fold, otherwise he will expose you. He knows everything wrong that you have done.

It has nothing to do with God, it is sheer politics. He has a file on you. He knows what you are doing with your neighbor's wife; he knows how many times you have stolen things; he knows how many times you have taken drugs which are illegal. He knows everything that is wrong about you - and that is his power over you. You cannot leave the fold; you have to remain in the fold.

If you start confessing directly to God, the whole strategy of keeping you enslaved in a psychological concentration camp will fail.

So let the pope do whatsoever he wants to do: I am coming to Italy, and I am going to challenge him in his own Vatican on each single fundamental question of religion. If he does not have any courage, he can go on another world tour when I am there.

Question 2:

I have absolutely an idea who is the antichrist: pope the Polack.

And when I say this, I am saying it not without any reasoning behind it. Every religion has been destroyed by its priests.

There is an ancient parable in the East that a newly-recruited devil came running to the old master, the great devil, perspiring, huffing and puffing. He said, "What are you doing here smoking Havana cigars? Are you not aware that one man on the earth has found the truth? If he spreads it to the people, our whole business will be destroyed!"

The old devil went on smoking and smiling. He said, "Don't be worried, my son. You are new - you don't know our strategies. My priests have already reached there; they are surrounding the man.

Now they will not let anything reach to the people uninterpreted.

"They are my servants, but they will pretend to be his priests. They will write his books, they will interpret his philosophy. They will make a church, and they will convert people. They will not allow anybody to reach to the man directly - we don't allow anybody to reach to truth directly. Everybody has to go via the right channel, and the right channel is the priest. And all the priests are my employees, so don't you be worried. Quiet down. Have a Havana cigar."

The new devil said, "This is strange, because I saw there many very saintly looking people sitting around the man."

The old devil said, "Yes, they are my people - very expert. It has happened many times: many people have found truth, but my priests have always spoiled it. Truth has never been able to reach to the people; what reaches to the people is distortion."

Pope the Polack is the antichrist.

And twenty centuries of these Polacks and popes prove that whatever they have been doing is against Christ. They call Christ "the prince of peace," and all the popes have been going on crusades, religious wars; destroying villages, murdering people - Jews, Mohammedans; fighting continuously, burning people alive; burning living women for the simple reason that somebody suspected that the woman was a witch.

Now, the word 'witch' is a beautiful word. It means a wise woman; there is nothing wrong in it. But these wise women were dangerous to the priests, who could not allow any competitors; hence the very word 'witch' became derogatory. They must have burned thousands of beautiful women, forced them to confess that they were witches. And the meaning of witch they managed to concoct was that the women were in a sexual relationship with the devil.

The devil does not exist; how can you have a sexual relationship with him? But in the middle ages they tortured these women day in, day out. Finally the women gave up, seeing no hope - unless they confessed they will be tortured, and once they confess, then they will be burned.

The torture must have been tremendous, because nobody would choose to be burned alive unless the torture was more painful than being burned alive. They confessed: yes, they had been sexually connected with the devil; once they had admitted this they were burned alive.

Thousands of people have been killed by these people who represent "the prince of peace." And what peace have they brought to the world? You can see: the two world wars have been fought in the Christian section of the world; and the third world war will also be fought in the Christian section of the world.

These people are representatives not of peace but of death.

So I say categorically that the antichrist is already in the Vatican. He has started doing the worst that can be done to humanity. He is preaching to the whole world against birth control, against the pill, against abortion. That is enough, that will destroy this whole world through starvation, through poverty.

Right now there are five billion people on the earth - and the earth is capable of supporting joyously not more than one billion people. One billion people can live on this earth in a dance, in ecstasy - but five billion people? And by the end of this century the population will be six billion. Out of sheer overpopulation - no nuclear weapons are needed - humanity can commit suicide.

My answer is absolutely clear: Pope the Polack is the antichrist; all the popes have been - and not only in Christianity but in every religion.

If you look into the history of religions, you will be surprised: Gautam Buddha rebelled against brahminism because it was creating a very dead society in India through the caste system.

Somebody was born high, somebody was born low and the lowest class was untouchable. Not only were the people untouchable, even their shadows were untouchable.

What man has done to man is worth remembering so that we do not do it again.

In India, the lowest class - which means one fourth of India - had to shout loudly, with a bell in their hands, telling whoever was on the road, "Please move." And they had a broom attached to their back, so that wherever they passed the broom went on cleaning the place. And if somebody by chance happened to be touched by their shadow, he had to take a bath to purify himself. Such indignity has never been done anywhere... such inhumanity!

Buddha rebelled against it, but the surprising fact is that all the people who wrote Buddha's scriptures were brahmins. All his disciples who surrounded him were brahmins. Strange! Mahavira, another great teacher, of Jainism, was also against Hinduism and brahminism and its caste system, but all his nine apostles were brahmins. I think the parable I told you is not just a parable; it is a truth.

Those brahmins have done everything that they could manage. They have changed the words of Buddha; they have interpolated their own interpretations in them. You cannot be certain whether it has been said by Buddha or by the people who have been writing these things; there is no way to figure it out. I am certain that there are sentences which a Buddha cannot say. I am certain that there are sentences which a Mahavira cannot say, because those sentences prove utter ignorance, not enlightenment.

So the real enemies are not the people who are against, the real enemies are always those who are close to you. Who betrayed Jesus? One of his most intimate disciples, Judas. And for what? - only thirty silver coins, and he sold his master. If anybody had said, "Judas is the person who is the antichrist with you" nobody would have listened. But now we know that he WAS the antichrist.

Gautam Buddha's own cousin-brother, who lived with him as his disciple for many years - Devadatta - finally betrayed him and declared himself to be the real Buddha. He took away five hundred disciples with him and was proclaiming around the country that "Gautam Buddha is fake; I am real."

And he was Gautam Buddha's cousin-brother, a very loved one. Buddha was so close to him that perhaps he might have chosen him as his successor.

Mahavira was betrayed by his own son-in-law, who was also his disciple. His daughter was a disciple, his son-in-law was a disciple - but the son-in-law was very insistent that he should be declared to be his successor.

Mahavira said, "I am not going to die now; at least thirty years more I am going to be here - don't be in a hurry."

But his son-in-law was worried that somebody more capable, more articulate might appear. He finally threatened Mahavira that if he does not declare him his successor then he is going to rebel against him and declare himself to be the real master of Jainism; Mahavira is just a hypocrite. And he did it, he took away with him hundreds of disciples of Mahavira.

So it is not just one instance.

If the antichrist can be born anywhere, then the place is the Vatican. And this man, pope the Polack, fits perfectly. The time is right: humanity is coming to an end. If a great spiritual revival does not prevent a global suicide, if individuals don't start taking their own responsibility - if they don't desert their so-called leaders and their churches and their holy books - the world is not going to survive long.

My effort is simply to make you aware that there is still time - not very much, but still there is time. If all the individuals from all the religions simply declare that they are no longer Hindus, no longer Christians, no longer Buddhists - they want total freedom for themselves and they take their responsibility on themselves; they don't want to be saved by anybody else. That is ugly; that is humiliating yourself, insulting your own self. But, "If I can be saved, I can be saved by my own self; and I will search for the truth on my own - whatsoever the cost"...

If people desert the churches and the synagogues and the temples and the mosques, and if people do declare that "the whole earth is ours..."

The nations do not need to exist - there is no need. They can exist as functions, just like the post office or railway trains, or telephone exchanges. Nations can exist for doing particular functions, but there should be no boundaries - either of nation, religion, race, color.

If we can declare the whole world as one, we can save the world yet.

Question 3:

Existence is dialectical.

If there is love there is hate, if there is day there is night, if there is pain there is pleasure, if there is man there is woman.

Existence functions through dialectics.

The religions who believe in God have to declare that the devil is a reality. If the devil is only a fiction, then their God also is a fiction. The reason behind this declaration is not to prove the reality of the devil, but to support the reality of God.

There are religions - like Taoism in China - which have no devil, because they have no God. There are religions in India - Jainism - which have no devil because they have no God. Buddhism in Japan, in Ceylon, in India, in Thailand, in Korea, has no devil because it has no God.

The pope's declaration about the reality of the devil is very cunning. It is a strategy to prove that God is real. Without the devil, God cannot exist. It won't fit in the dialectic.

But it raises many questions. If the devil is real, who created the devil? Either he must have existed always with God, or he was also created when the world was created. If he has always existed with God, then he has the same status and the same eternity as God. And looking at the world, he seems to be more powerful than God.

Who manages all these wars? Who manages so many killings and rapes and crimes? Millions of people are behind bars - who manages it? God seems to be only in books - the devil is very much active and has tremendous power. God seems to be absolutely impotent before the devil.

And if they are going to exist together forever - because without the devil God cannot exist, God is dependent on the devil - then why worship God? It is better to worship the devil!

Secondly, if someone says that God was alone before he created the world, then why did he create the devil? Then HE is responsible for everything wrong that happens in the world - for all the crimes and for all the sins, he is responsible. Why did he create the devil in the first place?

And this seems to be simply unbelievable - that he creates the devil, and people are killed and women are burned because they are making love with one of the creations of God. So what is wrong in it? If it was wrong - God is all-knowing: past, present, future - he should not have created the devil. And if he could exist alone for eternity, why can't he exist alone today? What is the need for the devil?

But these are all hypothetical questions which have no roots in reality. First you create God, then you become afraid that he needs an antithesis; otherwise somebody is going to ask, How can he remain in existence without his polar opposite? Then the devil has to be brought in from the back door.

But it does not solve any problems. It makes God dependent on the devil, and the devil becomes more powerful than God. And the world in every way proves that the devil is more powerful than God.

The simple and innocent are cheated, deceived; the cunning become powerful, become politicians, become presidents, prime ministers.

The devil seems to be a far more potent force.

I simply deny what the pope has said. And when I am in Rome, I will ask him, "If the devil is a reality, bring him in front of the people. A reality is objective - bring the reality before the people. Where are you hiding the devil - in the Vatican? Because only you know that he is a reality...

"Nobody else knows that he is a reality; everybody thinks that he is a fiction. It is for the first time that you are proclaiming that he is a reality - you must have encountered him. What kind of a relationship do you have with the devil? Certainly you are not a woman; it can only be homosexual.

"What kind of conversations are you having with the devil? and for what reason? You are supposed to be the representative of God, and you are proving the reality of the devil, not the reality of God - which IS in question. In every young man and young woman's mind the question is about God, not the devil. Who cares about the devil? Prove God and his reality! But strange, you are trying to prove the reality of the devil. Perhaps YOU are the devil, perhaps he is hiding behind you."

I have moved around so many places - I have never come across him. That's why I am going to visit the Vatican. Perhaps... I will be absolutely satisfied if the devil can be presented before the public. A reality is not something that has to be proved; it can be simply presented. You need not prove that there is a sun - nobody proves it. You need not prove that there is light - everybody who can see, knows it. Realities don't need any proofs; only unrealities need proofs and arguments and theologies.

It is absolutely absurd; neither God exists nor the devil exists. Man's life is not dominated by God or by the devil. Man's life, scientifically, is either dominated by unconsciousness or by consciousness.

This is the real polarity.

Act more consciously, and you will be coming more and more to a quality that can only be called godliness - not God, not a person but a quality, a fragrance.

Act unconsciously, and you will be coming more and more close to something which cannot be personified as the devil but can only be called a quality: evilness. The unconscious mind behaves in wrong ways; the conscious mind behaves in right ways. And the only religion there is, is the art of changing the unconscious mind into consciousness, so that you don't have the duality of unconscious and conscious but you have only one... a pure light, a pure consciousness.

And out of that consciousness, everything is divine.

Question 4:

It is absolutely untrue.

It is happening by itself - there is no organization which is taking care of television, or other news media.

It is happening by itself just the way it happens when in the morning the sun rises and the birds start singing, and the flowers start blossoming. Not that the sun goes and knocks on the door of every bird's nest, "Wake up, I am here. And start singing!" It is not that it goes to every flower and says, "What are you doing, you lazy one! I am here - start blossoming and spreading your fragrance!"

There is no organization around me, just a few friends who take care of me. If the television stations, newspapers, magazines, radio, are coming to me, it is on their own. Some fragrance has reached to them, something has pulled them.

There may be many reasons for their coming to me. Some may be coming out of curiosity; some may be coming with a negative mind, just to condemn me. Some may be sent by people like pope the Polack to know about me, what kind of man this is. And some are coming because they have heard about me, they have read about me, and a certain feeling of love has arisen in them.

But it is all happening; there is no management, there is no organization.

I have lived for thirty-five years absolutely trusting in existence, so whatever happens is good, and whatever happens I am grateful for it.

Question 5:

I was never an emperor, and I don't have any kingdom - neither have I had one ever before. But after the fascist destruction by the American government of my commune in Oregon, America, it is simply human that people started feeling sympathetic.

They started looking at why the greatest power in the world should be so afraid of a man who has no power; why a great power should be afraid of a small commune of five thousand people which lives in a desert, which has changed the desert into an oasis, which is not in any way a disturbance to any neighbor - because the closest town was twenty miles away.

The commune had one hundred and twenty-six square miles of desert, and it was situated only in three square miles of that land.

The way they behaved with me, the way they behaved with sannyasins... Where five thousand dancing and singing people were living, now there are only one hundred and sixty people left - it is a ghost town.

For four years, five thousand people were working twelve hours a day, sometimes fourteen hours a day, to create beautiful houses, roads, lakes, gardens; they had made a small paradise with their own hands. It was their own creation. Why should the American government be so worried and afraid of these people?

The land was lying dead for fifty years - nobody was ready to purchase it because it was simply desert. We changed the land. It was supporting five thousand people with food, vegetables, milk products - everything that we needed. And the people were not just living as they live in any other town; they were experimenting for something which is going to happen in the future. They were living one hundred years ahead.

In the morning they were meditating; then they were listening to me, to the answers to their questions. Then they were working, and then it was a beauty to see five thousand people eating in one kitchen, in one place. The family had disappeared - or it had become a family of five thousand people.

And after this whole day's work, in the night you could see people dancing, singing, playing on their musical instruments late into the night. It was just a rejoicing twenty-four hours around the clock.

Why have these people been forced out, and what has America gained? It has gained its desert back.

If America loves deserts, it should start destroying other cities too. The whole of America can become a desert. If they are not capable, they can invite the Soviet people; they can manage to make the whole of America a desert.

What have they gained?

They have not gained anything, but they have lost tremendously. They have lost five thousand dancing, singing, rejoicing people who were not miserable... because not a single man went mad, not a single man committed suicide. Nothing that goes on happening in every city was happening there - it was a totally different climate.

For the first time in the whole of history... it was a small place where money was not circulating. We had stopped using it, no money was to be used in the commune. And just by stopping the use of money, we destroyed the distinction of the rich and the poor.

You might have millions of dollars - it would be of no use. You could donate your dollars to the commune, but you could not use them to purchase anything. All your needs would be fulfilled by the commune - and everybody's needs were fulfilled. Nobody was hungry, nobody was without clothes, and nobody was bothered for tomorrow. The today was so full, so enchanting, so magical, that nobody thought about yesterdays or tomorrows.

Fifty thousand people used to visit the commune around the year. We made a place in America which was very strange. People don't go to America for spiritual search. Have you ever heard of anybody going to America for spiritual search? They go to India, they go to Japan, they go to the Middle East; but nobody goes to America. What has America to give as far as spirituality is concerned?

But fifty thousand people from around the world - from India, from the Middle East, from Japan, from countries which have been the sources of spirituality for centuries - were coming to America for spiritual search.

If American politicians had any understanding, any intelligence, they would have supported the commune, helped the commune. It was going to become a Mecca, a Jerusalem of the young people of the whole world. But one does not expect intelligence from politicians.

They became jealous because fifty thousand people were not even going to the White House. They became jealous of the commune because there was not a single beggar. And we had accepted two hundred American beggars into the commune, and those beggars were as happy as they had never been before. I asked a few of them and they said, "This is the first time we are recognized as human beings. Outside in the world we are thought of as worse than dogs." They were street people, and we were ready to accommodate more street people.

The American politicians became afraid because the commune was living comfortably, luxuriously.

I am absolutely against poverty. In four years time not a single baby was born. Nobody was forced to use birth control, but it was simply explained that the world is overpopulated: "Do you want your child to grow up in a world with AIDS spreading, nuclear weapons piling up, population increasing?

By the end of this century, from many directions there is going to be just darkness all over the earth.

Would you like your child to be born into this world? If you love, you will be the last to give birth to a child. This is not the time."

The American government was more angry because there was a higher communism happening than is in Soviet Russia, or any other communist country. And most strange of all, the communism was happening side by side with anarchism, which are polar enemies. Anarchism believes in no government; communism believes that government is needed - first to destroy capitalism.

But once people are in power and they have destroyed capitalism, who is going to take the power from their hands? Seventy years have passed since the revolution in Russia. Capitalism has disappeared long ago; now everybody is poor. But those who are in power are more powerful than any rich man ever was in any country. And they are not going to drop their powers.

Yes, one thing has happened: because everybody is equally poor, they think equality has happened.

There is no comparison left. In the commune everybody was rich, nobody was poor. This I call the higher quality of communism.

They became afraid - and there was no government, there was no enforcement. The American government became afraid of what was happening: if the American people become aware of it - and they were becoming aware - slowly, slowly then, it will create a problem. It is better to destroy it. It will give a comparison to people.

The commune had hundreds of cars. No car belonged to anybody - everybody was able to use any car he wanted. The commune had one hundred buses, five airplanes, its own airport, and everybody was available, capable of being happy, of being blissful. To be rich is dangerous because it creates comparison in other peoples' eyes and they start asking the politicians, "What you have been doing for thousands of years, these people have been able to do in four years! And if it can happen to these people, why can't it happen to all people, to everybody?"

They arrested me without any warrant, at the point of twelve guns - they never told me why they had arrested me. They did not allow me to inform my attorneys - which is absolutely undemocratic and illegal. And when the whole story became known to the world press, it was a sudden exposure of America's reality. It is not the people of America, but the American politicians and the bureaucracy of America that is fascist.

The destruction of the commune exposed them. That is the reason why in every country - not only in Italy - in every country the press has been sympathetic. In America itself the news media has not been only sympathetic, it has been very protective.

I was in jails for twelve days, and each jail was surrounded by hundreds of cameras, photographers, television people, newspapers. They wanted to know about me.... Just seeing me pass from the car to the jail, they wanted to know about me: "Are they doing any harm to you? Just say, and we will let the whole world know."

It is simple human psychology. It is not that I have lost any empire - I had none. It is not that I am no longer an emperor - I have never been. But I have a totally different kind of world with me... people who love me and people who are blessed by my love. If you call love power, then it is power. And perhaps it is the only power which should be saved, and all other power should be destroyed.

And whatever is my teaching is so clear to any intelligent person who is not closed, that I don't see why sooner or later the news media around the world is not going to be for me. It is not for ME, it is for truth, it is for love, it is for beauty, it is for meditation.

It is for a new kind of religiousness.