Utopia is just around the corner

Question 1:

They are right - just their idea of utopia is not right. They think that utopia is something which cannot be achieved; that's exactly the meaning of the word utopia. Sir Thomas More wrote a book called UTOPIA, in which he hopes for everything that man has always aspired to but has never been able to achieve.

There have been revolutions, there have been attempts to make alternative societies; all have failed.

But that does not mean that we have made every possible effort.

I am reminded of Thomas Alva Edison. He was working on the electric bulb for three years continuously. All his colleagues were tired, bored, but they were puzzled and amazed that the old man would come to the lab before everybody else, full of zest, enthusiasm, hoping that it was going to happen today.

Finally they said, "Three years we have been hearing about it; nine hundred experiments have been made - all have failed. But you seem to be absolutely unaffected by the failures."

Edison said, "No, I am not unaffected. I am immensely inspired. If nine hundred attempts have failed, it means now we are coming closer and closer every day to that attempt which is going to succeed. How long can it elude us? It is a challenge."

Do you see his point? He is saying nine hundred doors are closed. We have enquired: they are wrong doors, they lead nowhere. Now the number of doors is reduced. There are nine hundred doors less. We are succeeding; we are coming closer and closer to the door that will lead to the successful experiment.

Slowly, slowly his colleagues deserted him, his friends left him. But he continued, and one day he succeeded. It was late at night; it must have been three o'clock in the morning... the first light bulb!

And he was so enchanted by it that he simply went on sitting under the light, looking at it.

For five years he had been working.... And his wife shouted from the bedroom, "Are you mad or something? Put off that light and come to bed."

And he said to her, "You don't know what you are talking about. To put on this light I have wasted five years, lost all my friends and colleagues, and you are telling me to put it off. Just come and see the miracle."

I am a utopian.

I am very optimistic.

I trust in the inspirations, in the hopes of man. We have just been doing something wrong to materialize them. The basic thing that I want to point out to you is that we have always been thinking of changing the society. The communists, the fascists, the socialists, the fabians, the anarchists, all kinds of utopians have one single thing in common, which is the cause of their failure. They all have tried to change the society.

The society does not exist anywhere.

What exists is the individual.

Society is only a name. Have you ever come across society? Have you ever met society and said hello... shaken hands with society? Whenever you come across anybody it is the individual.

The individual is the reality.

Society is only a name.

They all tried to change the society, to change the individual. That was their wrong approach.

My effort is to change the individual.

The society will change by itself; it is simply a name. And to change the individual is not difficult, because each individual desires to be changed.

No individual is satisfied as he is. He wants to be more conscious, to be more peaceful, to be more loving, to be more loved. He wants a life full of flowers and fragrance. What he finds is just misery, anxiety, anguish, meaninglessness.

What the individual is missing is a very simple thing: a certain methodology to make him more centered, more silent, more serene, more collected, more together. The name of the methodology is what I call meditation. The individual needs something more than the mind; it is already in him, but he is entangled with the mind. His entanglement with the mind prevents him from seeing beyond it to his real self.

Just a little effort for watching the mind, sitting silently, looking at the mind, as if it does not belong to you - and it does not belong to you...

You are the watcher; the mind is the watched.

You are the observer; the mind is the observed.

You are the subject; the mind is the object - you are not one.

Your subjectivity is your liberation - liberation from the mind. And once you are liberated from the mind, once you know that you are beyond the mind, miraculously a great mastery arises in you. The mind cannot pull you this way and that, it simply becomes a humble servant.

The very presence of the master is enough for the mind to become an obedient servant. You can use it if you want. If you do not want to you can say, "Shut up!" and you can remain in eternal peace and silence. The mind is a good mechanism, a biocomputer, but it is not the master.

This is the change that has to be spread to every individual on the earth, and then utopia is just around the corner of the road. Then it is not something which cannot be achieved. It can be achieved, and it should be achieved.

The people who have been calling me an utopian must be thinking that they are condemning me.

They are wrong. I take it as a compliment. Give my thanks to them and tell them that I am an utopian, my people are utopians, and I want the whole world to become utopians.

Question 2:

It is. But one thing should be understood about it: in reality Zorba comes first, Buddha comes afterwards.

Zorba is the beginning, Buddha is the fulfillment.

Zorba is the roots, the trunk, the branches.

Buddha is the flowers, the fruit, the fragrance.

In reality this is the order. But I went first to Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha, and then I came to Crete, the land of Zorba. That has a significance....

When you approach a tree, first you see the flowers, the fruits. They come last as far as the tree's growth is concerned, but when you go to the tree, those are the first to be seen. And only if you want to go deeper into the reality of those flowers will you find that behind those flowers are hidden roots in the earth.

In life, Zorba comes first, Buddha comes second. But when you start exploring the reality of the flowers, Buddha comes first, Zorba comes at the very end. There are many who stop at the flowers and never bother about the roots. They are the fools, because they do not understand that the flowers will not exist even for a single moment if the roots do not go on supplying the juice to them.

But those roots are hidden under the ground.

Perhaps I am the first person who has made this connection between Zorba and Buddha.

The ambassador of Sri Lanka wrote me a letter saying, "You should not use these two names together, Zorba the Buddha, because it is insulting to Buddha, and it hurts the feelings of the Buddhists."

I wrote to him saying, "You don't understand; that's why your feelings are hurt. You are just looking at the flowers and forgetting the roots."

Without the roots, howsoever ugly the roots may be, there is no possibility of flowers. The whole existence of the tree depends on the hidden roots. They don't come into the light; they don't publicize themselves, but that does not mean that the man who is really into deep research about man's consciousness will not be able to find them.

I told the ambassador, "You can hurt as much as you want - but this is my experience, that every Buddha is based in the roots of Zorba."

I don't know what happened to him - he never replied.

The people who love Zorba will never think of Buddha; they remain with only the animal part of humanity. Zorba is beautiful, as beautiful as any animal - a beautiful bear, a beautiful lion. Zorba has the same beauty, the same intensity, the same power, and the same earthliness. I appreciate it... but that is not the end.

All that power, all that beauty should go through a transformation to create a far more delicate beauty, a far more delicate power, the power of love; a far deeper insight, the insight into existence itself; a far greater love, love that becomes compassion, compassion for the whole existence.

Zorba is beautiful, but only as a seed. He will attain to his full beauty when the seed becomes a tree and blossoms.

I went to Nepal first because that is where the flowers blossomed. And I have come to Crete second... where the roots are. There is a certain logic behind it. I love both, because to me they are one. And I don't love them separately, because then they are half, and just the half is ugly.

Only the whole is holy.

Only the whole has the beauty of organic unity.

Zorba is only a dream.

Buddha is the realization of the dream.

The land of Zorba and the land of Buddha should come into deeper contact. I made this journey to create a bridge, but I see strange bishops here who are protesting against me. I have not come to stay here; Zorba is my past, Buddha is my present.... I could have stayed in Nepal, but I cannot stay here, so they need not be afraid. But I never thought that in the land of Zorba there would be such cowardly bishops dominating people, telling lies to them - provoking them against a guest who is going to be here only for a few days, and who has come just to pay tribute to Zorba, not to these stupid bishops.

I don't care what they are saying because I have no desire to be here. I can leave tomorrow. I have paid my visit, I have paid my tribute, and those who can understand will have understood. Those who want to remain blind, that is their choice. Instead of coming to me, those bishops are asking the government that I should not be allowed to stay here.

They should have come to me - a man coming from the land of Buddha - they should have made some communication with me. They should have enquired what relatedness I see between Zorba and Buddha.

I have enhanced the beauty and honor of Zorba, and with the respect and honor of Zorba I have made his land also respectable.

These people should learn to behave a little more humanly - particularly to a guest who is just going to be here for a few days. I just wanted to see the place which can produce people like Zorba.

Zorba is fictitious, but the man who created Zorba must have carried a tremendous dream of himself being in Zorba's place, because no novelist writes anything which is not actually a compensation for his life. The poets who write about love write about love because they have missed love. Their beautiful poetry about love is a poor substitute.

Kazantzakis wanted to be a Zorba but could not gather courage. He could not gather courage because of his Christian heritage. In his novel ZORBA THE GREEK there is a beautiful statement.

Zorba is working with his boss. The boss is always sad, long-faced, worried, and Zorba is always enjoying the small things of life - food, wine, women. After a whole day's work he would go to the seashore and would dance alone, would play on his musical instrument. The boss could not believe that he has nothing - a poor man, but he lives like an emperor.

That night when he comes, his boss asks him, "Why am I so sad and why are you always so blissful?"

Zorba says to the boss, "Boss, the only problem with you is you think too much. I am a poor man; I don't think, I simply live."

In a small sentence - "You think too much" - he has given the whole insight of meditation.

Thinking too much is non-meditative. Thinking less and less you become more and more meditative.

The moment thinking ceases, you are in meditation.

But nobody has even explored Zorba's life; otherwise he would have found the possibility of his becoming a Buddha.

Even before Zorba, almost two thousand years ago, Greece produced a tremendously beautiful man, very close to Gautam Buddha. The man's name was Epicurus, and he was not a fiction, he was a living Zorba. His whole philosophy was just to live moment to moment and enjoy each moment as deeply as you can, because once it is gone, it is gone forever. He made a small commune in a forest which became known as the Garden of Epicurus.

But even Greeks have not paid much attention to Epicurus or his teachings; nothing much has survived... very few fragments here and there.

It seems we feel ashamed of zorbas, and they are authentically real human beings. Only on their solid rocks can we make beautiful temples of buddhahood, of enlightenment, of awakening.

Question 3:

It is; there is no question of why. A four-letter word is a four-letter word. All esoterics is nonsense.

But the question is significant. Because you became a sannyasin, naturally people must have assumed that you have become esoteric. You are no longer part of the ordinary world; you are searching for truth, going into higher stages of consciousness. People must have thought that you had become esoteric. They don't know anything about my sannyas.

The old sannyas is a four-letter word, it is esoteric. Esoteric means all kinds of nonsense - that you have seven bodies, that you have fourteen stages of consciousness...

In India there is a small, very rich community known as Radhaswamis. They are making a temple in the memory of their dead master in Agra, because he lived in Agra. They want to defeat the Taj Mahal in Agra. For one hundred years the work has continued. Only the ground floor is ready, but they have done a tremendous job. Seeing their half-completed temple, one can understand that if the temple is completed, the Taj Mahal will lose its glory. It will be number two; it cannot be number one any longer.

But they are running out of finances. It is all marble, with very complicated designs and very esoteric maps on the marble. They invited me - I was lecturing in Agra; they invited me to come to their temple, and the high priest told me, "We have a certain gradation. There are fourteen stages of paradise. Mohammed and Moses are in the third paradise; Krishna and Rama are in the fourth, higher than Moses and Mohammed. Kabir, Jesus, and Farid are in the fifth..." and so on and so forth.

They asked, "What do you think?"

I said, "You are perfectly right. Just one thing is wrong" - because their own guru is in the fourteenth, the highest paradise. I said, "Everything is right except that paradise has fifteen stages."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes... because I am in the fifteenth, and I have been pushing your guru down in the fourteenth. He tries to climb up to the fifteenth and I don't allow him, so I know your guru is in the fourteenth. There is no problem about it; I am perfectly acquainted with him."

He was very angry. He said, "You are the first person who accepted it - but the way you accepted it is worse. If you had said that all this is nonsense it would have been better."

I said, "It is not nonsense, it is very esoteric. But what can I do? - I am in the fifteenth. And there is no sixteenth floor, so I cannot go up. I cannot go down, and I am having constant trouble from your guru because he goes on trying to knock on my doors, and I have to push him back saying, 'Be in your place. As long as I am here you cannot enter. I don't want to share my room with anybody else.'"

That guru said, "This is strange."

I said, "It is strange. But up to now it was not strange: when your guru was in the fourteenth it was perfectly right; now it is strange. It is all nonsense. Who are you to decide who is higher and who is lower? What criterion have you got? You are putting Buddha on the seventh plane, and your own guru - who was not known outside Agra, and has nothing much in his teachings... I have looked into his books and it is all borrowed from others - he is in the fourteenth. You should be ashamed to do this.

"And if you can do this - put Buddha into the seventh, Kabir into the fifth, and your own guru into the fourteenth - you cannot prevent me from being in the fifteenth. What right have you got?"

If you want to know more about esoteric nonsense, you should look into theosophical literature.

There you will be in a wonderland - colors, auras, masters who are dead but still go on dictating to the disciples... They even write letters to the disciples.

Blavatsky, who was the founder of the theosophical movement, used to get letters from dead masters. They have found a strange name for one dead master - Koot Hoomi. Nobody knows who this Koot Hoomi is. So that people don't laugh they called him K.H for short.

Letters from K.H. were received continuously by Blavatsky.... People would be sitting and Blavatsky would close her eyes and go into a trance, and suddenly a letter would come from the roof. That whole thing was in a court case; the whole esoterics of it was destroyed because a man used to hide and HE dropped the letters. When they were all sitting with closed eyes he used to drop the letters. And all those letters were found to be written in the handwriting of Blavatsky, and in those letters all kinds of directions were given - spiritual instructions. The whole theosophical movement is full of this kind of nonsense.

Looking at you in red clothes, wearing the mala, people must think that you have gone esoteric. Just explain to them that you have found a man who is the most non-esoteric person possible, and this has nothing to do with any esoteric philosophy.

Reality is very simple.

But religions, their leaders, try to make it very complex, try to make it mysterious. It is a mystery, but there is no need to make it mysterious.

I used to have a friend. Now he is in Bangladesh; he is a Mohammedan. We used to study in the same university, and he loved me very much. Suddenly when he went back to Bangladesh, he became famous as Bengali Baba. I met him in Calcutta and I asked him, "What is the matter? What has happened?"

He had many followers who thought that he was one of the hidden teachers. God goes on sending secret teachers who work in a secret way!

I said, "I never thought that you were a secret teacher; you have been with me for four years."

He said, "Let everybody go; then I will tell you the real story."

When everybody was gone and we were left alone in the night he said, "Now I can tell you the whole thing. The thing is, you know I am a lazy man. In the university, if you had not been writing my answers in the examinations, I would have failed."

I had to do two papers in three hours - one and a half hours for myself, one and a half hours for him.

But he was such a lovely person that I said, "There is no harm. I may lose first class, I may come second class or third class, but let him pass. If I leave him behind, he is never going to pass that class again." I had to keep dragging him with me, till we were out of the university.

He said, "You know I was a lazy person. I cannot do any job. I looked around and I saw that doing something esoteric would be good: no work, no boss, thousands of followers, great respect."

I said, "That's okay, but how did you manage it? - because I don't see in you any capacity...."

He said, "No capacity is needed. I just played a trick. I started living in Sufi dress, green. I entered into the train; the ticket checker came in. He asked me for the ticket. I said, 'That is very insulting.

Nobody has ever asked me for a ticket. A saint is not to be asked for a ticket - you just get out of here.'

"The ticket collector was really angry. He said, 'This is something. You don't have the ticket and you are telling me to get out from here. Either you give me the ticket or I will throw you out.'"

My friend told me that he said, "Okay, I will not get out by myself - you throw me out." The man was a little hesitant... a Sufi mystic. He was also a Mohammedan; perhaps it may bring a curse or something. All the passengers gathered together, and now it was a question of prestige, what to do.

He pulled the man out. He stood out on the platform, with his stick still inside the compartment, and the miracle was that the train would not move.

The driver was trying hard, the guard was waving his flag, the stationmaster was whistling hard, the engineer was looking... There was nothing wrong, but the train would not move.

Finally, somebody in the crowd said, "It is because of that mystic who is still keeping his stick inside the train."

All the passengers got down and there was a great crowd around him; the stationmaster came running, the driver came. They somehow persuaded the ticket collector, "You should not do such a thing. What was the matter... one man? You just ask for his forgiveness."

The ticket collector was very reluctant. He said, "This is strange. I am a government servant; this is my duty and I have to ask forgiveness for asking for the ticket...?" But the crowd was getting angrier and the situation was such that they might have killed the ticket collector. Finally he had to touch the feet of the mystic who was standing with closed eyes.

The mystic said, "This will not do. You will have to bring some sweets and one coconut and place them at my feet, and promise me that never again any saint of my order of the green robes should be asked for a ticket. These trains are running because of us."

It was true... because they could not manage to move the train even an inch. The sweets were brought, the coconut was brought, they were placed at his feet, and he said, "Now take me back to my place just the way you pulled me out, and learn to have respect. Your government job is nothing; there is a higher government."

As the mystic went in, the train moved. And since that day he became famous as Bengali Baba.

That's all he has done. And now he is living luxuriously... he has done a miracle.

I asked him, "How did you manage it?"

He said, "It was simple. I had to bribe two persons, the ticket collector and the driver. That ticket collector was my man, and also the driver. A simple thing... I gave twenty-five rupees to each and I said, 'It is a question of my life and death. Just do it once and my whole life I can live as lazily as I want."

"Now people are massaging my feet, bringing sweets, and many miracles are happening on their own; now I am not doing anything. Sick people get healthy, people who don't have children start getting many children - but this is all happening on its own, I am not doing anything. I have done my first and last trick."

People have been cheated all through the ages by all kinds of charlatans - and these charlatans have become saints. They have been telling lies, but there is no way to detect who is right.

Hindus believe in one hell. To defeat Hindus, Jainas believe in seven hells; to defeat Jainas there was a teacher contemporary to Mahavira, Gosal, who believed in seven hundred hells. You cannot prevent... Neither is there any evidence for one hell, nor for seven, nor for seven hundred.

But people are gullible! People are so afraid. And these people have been making everybody afraid of hell and hellfire, and making everybody greedy for paradise and heaven and all the joys and pleasures there. Between greed and fear all your religions have existed.

So whosoever thinks you to be esoteric, tell him that for the first time there is a man who is absolutely non-esoteric, who says that there have never been any miracles, that all miracles are either manipulated or invented later on when the founder is dead.

Nobody walks on water; nobody makes people come alive again when they have been dead for four days. All these stories... and a small human being, afraid of getting into some hell from where there is no escape, naturally gets caught by these so-called saints, miracle-mongers, priests.

My sannyas has nothing to do with esotericism; it is purely a science.

Question 4:

This is one of the most unfortunate things.

Man has been exploited in every possible way: even his hopes have been exploited, his aspirations have been exploited, his absolutely valid demands have been exploited. And in ten thousand years not a single revolution has succeeded, for the simple reason that the people who came into power immediately changed their faces.

They came into power because they inspired people and their hopes of a liberated life, of a better life, of more individuality, of more freedom, of more equality, of more richness. They were very articulate as far as influencing the people was concerned, but the moment they got the power - and it was the people who put them in power - the people suffered immensely. Thousands of people died in the hope that their children would live in freedom; it was worth dying.

But the people who came into power suddenly changed. They forgot all about revolution, they forgot all about liberation, they forgot all about their promises. They started behaving the same way as the people were behaving who were in power before.

In fact, these people proved to be more dangerous because they were afraid of revolution. They tried to make their power more solid, and they destroyed people's freedom more totally, so there was no possibility of any revolution.

You cannot conceive of the possibility of a revolution in the Soviet Union for the simple reason that in to power proved to be more inhuman. One million people were murdered by the revolutionaries after the revolution.

Those one million people were the people who had placed them in power, but they were afraid of those people because they were dangerous; they could put somebody else in power. They could not be allowed to live - and their only fault was that they had put the revolutionaries in power. One million people were simply destroyed.

And then there was a great power struggle amongst the leaders. Lenin was the first man in the revolution, Trotsky was the second, Kamenev was the third, Zenoviev was the fourth... and so on.

Amongst the ten great leaders of the revolution, Joseph Stalin's name was not there.

Stalin was just the secretary of the Communist Party; he was not an orator. He was not articulate enough to influence people, but he was very clever and cunning in organization. And he proved to be really dangerous, because all these leaders were influencing the people, and Stalin was capturing the Communist Party from inside - the organization which was going to be in power.

Stalin's name was not known; he was an unknown person. But as the Communist Party came into power, he started giving small doses of poison to Lenin, through his doctor, such small doses that it made him incapable of functioning - and it killed him within two years. It is still undecided whether he really poisoned him or not, because no investigation was ever made. But all the circumstantial evidence is that he killed the man.

Trotsky - who was number two and the defense minister - seeing the situation escaped from the Soviet Union in time, before he could be caught. Lenin was finished; Trotsky escaped and became a refugee in Mexico.

But Stalin was not ready to leave him alive. Trotsky took his whole family; only his dog was left in the house. You will be surprised to know that Stalin shot the dog! Now the dog was not going to compete - but because it was Trotsky's dog, it could not live. Trotsky was murdered in Mexico by a man arranged by Stalin. He was murdered in such an inhuman way that you cannot conceive... hit again and again on his head with a hammer till his head was completely smashed.

The third man, Kamenev, was killed. The fourth man, Zenoviev, was killed. All the ten top people were finished.

Stalin became one of the greatest dictators in the whole history of man, and he managed that nobody even talked about the government. Any criticism, even in private, became impossible.

He organized the whole country in such a way that small children were part of the young communist league, and they were conditioned to be faithful to communism. If their parents said anything against communism, or the Soviet Union, they had to inform immediately. The wives were members of the women's league and they were conditioned that if their husbands or their children talked about the Communist Party, or anything suspicious, they had to report it immediately. The men were part of the Communist Party with the same conditioning.

In every family everybody was a detective, and people were rewarded when they reported against their own parents, against their own children, against their own wives, against their own husbands....

Stalin was not a man to send you to jail or to send you for trial, no. His method was simple. Once something was reported against you, in the middle of the night you would be captured and never again would you be seen or heard of; you were simply finished. He did not believe in any legal system or law or anything. He believed only in death. Why waste time? - years and years of legal battles... Just finish the person.

In the democratic world this is the rule - at least in principle, although it is not followed anywhere - that not even one single innocent person should be punished, even if ninety-nine criminals have to be left.

Stalin changed the rule completely. He said that not a single criminal should be left, even if ninety- nine innocent people have to be killed.

For seventy years the same small clique was ruling. After Stalin, Khrushchev came into power and he exposed everything. He must have been boiling within, seeing all the horror, murder, poisoning, killing of millions of people by Stalin; so he exposed Stalin.

When Khrushchev came to power, in front of the Communist Party in his first address, he said that Stalin had been the most murderous man in the whole of history. One man from the back asked, "You have always been with Stalin, you have been one of the chief members, an important member of the Communist Politburo. Why were you silent when all this was going on?"

Khrushchev laughed and said, "Whoever is saying this, please come out in front. I can't see your face; it is so dark at the back."

Nobody came out...

Khrushchev said, "Now do you understand? This is my answer. Why are you not coming out? you know you will be finished. That's why I didn't say anything - because I knew I would be finished."

You are asking about Italy. It has an unfortunate past: Benito Mussolini was allied with Adolf Hitler.

It has seen the fascist rule of murder, terror. And when they became free, liberated, they rejoiced, they danced in the streets, they sang.

But people don't understand one thing - that just getting out of one imprisonment does not mean that you will not get into another. You can get out of one imprisonment, and while you are dancing and singing and celebrating, another imprisonment is being created by your own leaders, who are promising you a better life, a better world, a better humanity.

These leaders are nothing but descendants of Benito Mussolini - the same type of mind. The politician is everywhere the same type of mind. A politician is lustful for power, and once he gets power, then how can he allow you to be free, to be liberated, to be independent? Again you are caught in the same net.

And this has been going on for centuries. It is time to understand the whole situation. It does not help to be cynical. It does not help to be a pessimist. It does not help to feel meaningless and empty.

It won't prevent the politicians from going on playing the same game.

You have to understand one thing: if the world is really interested in enjoying freedom, then politics should not be so important; it should be dethroned, reduced in power - there is no reason that it should have power. The government should be only functional, just as the post office is functional.

Nobody knows who the postmaster general is. Give politicians good and great names, but there is no need to take them too seriously and waste all your newspaper front pages on these people who have been torturing humanity for centuries.

Start different ways of expression, creativity, which have nothing to do with politics. Start small guilds, small communes of painters, of poets, of sculptors, of dancers, who have nothing to do with politics, who have no desire to be powerful, who really want to live, and live fully.

Let the whole society be slowly divided into communes of creative people. There is no need for political parties in the world. Every individual should stand on his own merit. And people can choose. Why should there be a political party? There is no reason. If you need a finance minister, all the great experts you have in economics and finance can compete for it, and someone can be chosen for it. There is no need for any party. We should move from party politics to pure individuals - from democracy, from dictatorship, to meritocracy.

Merit should be the only decisive point. And we have so many people of great merit - but they should not become part of a political party, they should not degrade themselves. To become part of a political party is below them - to beg for votes and promise you false things which they cannot fulfill. So only the third-class people, very mediocre people, become part of political parties; the best remain out.

The best should be the ones who manage the society. We have in every field geniuses, but you don't find those geniuses becoming prime ministers or presidents. They can become presidents and prime ministers if there are no political parties. Then their sheer merit will be enough, and nobody will even be capable of competing with them. They will not have to go to beg for your votes, they will be chosen unanimously.

There is no need to be a pessimist, no need to feel frustrated. After so long a history of continuous failure, I can understand, it is natural. But it is not going to help. We have to find a way... we have to find out why old attempts have failed, and we have to work out new methods, new strategies. The youth of the whole world is in the same situation and is ready to change all old structures and make every change that helps humanity to become free.

Freedom is such a spiritual necessity that without it man never attains his manhood. Liberation from dead superstitions, ideologies, dogmas is such a great necessity that once you are free of it you will feel as if you have got wings and you can fly into the sky.

The load of the past is too heavy and it is killing everybody. As far as I am concerned, I see it as a great opportunity. People change only when they come to the very brink of death; otherwise they don't change. The politicians of the whole world, the theologians of the whole world, the religious leaders - all have brought you to the brink of death.

Now the question is, either be ready to commit a global suicide or change the whole structure that has dominated you up to now. And very small changes are needed:

There should be no nations.

There should be no religions.

There should be no race distinctions.

There should be no color distinctions.

There should be no political parties. Nations can exist only as utilitarian units; otherwise everybody is a member of the whole earth. Governments can exist only as functional units, and they should be ruled not by politicians but by people of merit.

We have enough people of merit all around the world; there is no reason to be pessimistic. Perhaps at this moment we have more intelligence in the world than we ever had before. This is not the time to be pessimistic, this is the time to rejoice.

So this is my message to the Italian people: Rejoice, and destroy all stupidities that have been dominating you up to now.

Start from the Vatican.

Question 5:

The new age movement is just a fashion which will disappear very soon, as all your other movements have disappeared.

Now you don't see hippies.... It is a very great phenomenon that so many hippies suddenly disappeared. What happened to their revolution? It was a revolutionary movement; it was dropping out of the society. Why have they dropped back into the society?

All these movements are very short-lived. They have beautiful names - that does not matter - but they don't have a radical philosophy to change human beings.

The new age movement has nothing unique which can transform individuals. It is a fashion; soon it will die - just a passing phase.

I am not part of any movement.

What I am doing is something eternal.

It has been going on since the first man appeared on the earth, and it will continue to the last man.

It is not a movement, it is the very core of evolution.

So you are right that you don't count me as part of the new age movement. I am not. I am part of the eternal evolution of man.

The search for truth is neither new nor old. The search for your own being has nothing to do with time. It is non-temporal.

I may be gone, but what I am doing is going to continue. Somebody else will be doing it. I was not here and somebody else was doing it. Nobody is a founder in it, nobody is a leader in it. It is such a vast phenomenon that many enlightened people have appeared, helped and disappeared.

But their help has brought humanity a little higher, made humanity a little better, a little more human.

They have left the world a little more beautiful than they had found it.

It is a great contentment to leave the world a little better. More than that is asking too much. The world is too big; a single human individual is too small. If he can leave just a few touches to the painting, which for millions of years has been made by evolution, that's enough. Just a few touches...

a little more perfection, a little more clarity.

I am not part of any fashion, any movement. I belong to eternity, and I would like you also to belong to eternity, not to a passing phase.

Okay, Maneesha.