It is your mind again

Question 1:

The experience of hate is not very far away from love. It is love standing on its head.

The people who say, "God is dead but still I hate him," do not understand what they are saying, and where they are going.

In the first place, God has never been, so he cannot be dead. In the second place, if you have not loved God, you cannot hate him. In your hate, love still survives, it can reassert itself. Love reasserts out of hate that God will become alive again.

It is your mind again.

God is your projection.

Whether you love him or hate him, whether you believe in him or disbelieve in him does not matter - he will dominate your life. Through love he will dominate your life; through hate, perhaps more.

Just be free of the projections. When you are free of the projection, the fiction, the lie, you do not love, you do not hate: all those emotions disappear together.

It is like, for example, when you make a mistake in calculation. Two plus two you make five....

When you come to realise that two plus two is four, not five, do you hate five? It was simply a mistake; you simply forget all about it. Two plus two is four. You have come to know the truth; the falsity disappears. And all relationship with falsity makes it real, because how can you relate with something which is a lie? - even with hate.

I have been asked a question once: "Osho, do you hate God?"

I said, "No I do not even hate him. The question of love does not arise; I do not even hate him, because there is nobody to love or hate." First you have to create somebody, and then you can go on playing the game.

The German youth is angry with God. Out of anger, there is no understanding. Their statement, "There is no God, but I still hate him," is absolutely clear. The second part is their reality: they are denying God because they hate him. But this is the paradox. You cannot hate somebody who does not exist.

They are simply in a reactionary mode, they have moved to the other extreme, because the people who have believed in God have deceived humanity for generations. The younger people - not only in Germany but all over the world - feel that behind all this cheating, exploitation, deceiving, stands the fiction of God, that God has to be destroyed.

But he should not be destroyed out of hate; otherwise you will create him again. Your hate will not destroy him, it will destroy you. This is something very important to understand.

Once Gautam Buddha was passing by the side of a village. The people were very much against him, because his teachings were so new and so much against the old and the ancient. They surrounded him, abused him, used four-letter words against him.

He listened silently, and finally he said, "I have to reach another village in time. If you have finished whatever you wanted to say, I can go. Or if something is still left, then I am coming back: I will stop here again, and you can finish whatever you want to say."

Somebody from the people asked, "Don't you want to say anything to us?"

Buddha said, "No, because your anger, your hatred, will give you enough punishment."

When you are angry, you are punishing yourself. You are burning, you are destroying your heart and its higher qualities, and you are full of hate. It may be towards God... but remember one thing: if you are so full of hate towards God, you cannot love anybody else. A heart full of hate - it does not matter what the object is - becomes poisonous and forgets the language of love.

It happened that a great Sufi mystic, Hassan, was staying with Rabiya al Adabiya - a great woman in the history of humanity. Perhaps no woman has risen to such heights. In a man-made society where women are condemned, she must have been of tremendous power, strength.

Hassan asked her, "Can I borrow your copy of the holy KORAN? I have not brought mine because I thought I can use your copy in the morning when I pray."

Rabiya said, "You are welcome - this is my copy."

And as Hassan opened it, he was surprised, because Mohammedans don't believe that the KORAN can be improved upon, or that any word can be cut out, reduced, added to - no editing: it is the word of God, and you cannot be wiser than God - and Rabiya had crossed out a full line. Hassan could not think that Rabiya could do such a thing.

He said to Rabiya, "Somebody has spoiled your KORAN. It has lost its sacredness."

Rabiya said, "Nobody can touch my KORAN; it is not spoiled. I have made it really sacred. Just look at the line that I have crossed out" - the line was, "When you come to see the devil, hate him."

Hassan said, "But what is wrong with it? We have to love God and hate the devil."

Rabiya said, "You are still just an intellectual - love and hate are not your existential experiences. I have loved, and my heart is full of love. Now, if the devil comes in front of me, I cannot hate him.

From where will I get hate? I can only love him, that's all that I can share. It is impossible for me to hate him, and if it is impossible for me, the sentence in the KORAN is wrong. It is against my existential experience."

If you are full of love, hate becomes impossible.

The youth around the world are angry, full of hate. This is creating tremendous trouble for them.

They are hating those things which have tortured man, but they are forgetting that by hating them, they are poisoning themselves.

I am not saying love them, I am simply saying there is no need to have any emotional relationship with things which are simply lies: God, the devil - simply lies, inventions of man's mind and his fear.

These people may look to the so-called religious as if they are against religion, they are talking against God. That's not true. They are still in a relationship with God. They may have changed from love to hate, but God exists. The first part of their sentence is illogical, it does not fit with the second part. And the first part is only intellectual, the second part is emotional.

The first part is only in the head, and the second part is in the heart, and whenever it is a question of choice, head cannot be chosen against the heart.

The heart is your relationship with existence.

The head is your relationship with the society.

The head is full of all kinds of lies that society has used to exploit you, but the society cannot reach to your heart.

That is one of your great privileges - that the hands, the ugly hands of the society cannot reach to your heart. But now you yourself are doing that: the society cannot create hate in your heart, but you are creating hate in your heart for God. Now, God does not deserve even hate; he simply does not exist. You have to be free, completely free from God. And a humanity free from God will be for the first time tasting real freedom.

If God is there above your head, you are just a creature made out of mud. The English word 'human' comes from humus which means mud. The Hebrew word adam comes from humus: it means mud.

You are just made of mud, puppets made of mud.

God has given you great dignity, great love, great respect. And the people who have been preaching this God to you perhaps are unaware of all the implications of it. If God is there, then for everything good and bad he is responsible. He is responsible for the devil, he is responsible for anything that is evil. He is responsible for anything that goes wrong in you. He is the creator - he should have known better.

If God is there, then there is only one criminal, one sinner, and you are all absolutely innocent.

You are puppets, and puppets cannot commit sin. And if God can create you, any moment he can destroy you. Your existence is not sure; don't take it for granted.

And God is whimsical, because for eternity he never created. Only six thousand years ago, he suddenly created this whole existence. And for the whole of eternity what he was doing? Playing cards alone?

And if he can create you, he has the power then to destroy you. So what is the point of evolution?

What is the point of spiritual growth? What is the point of spiritual growth? What is the point of becoming a Gautam Buddha? It does not matter. A puppet remains a puppet. It may be Zorba or it may be Gautam Buddha, but whatever the puppeteer wants, the puppet does.

No, with God man cannot have freedom, man cannot have responsibility, and man cannot think of spiritual growth.

Everything is meaningless because of God; everything loses all joy because you are puppets, and the strings are not in your own hands. Somebody else pulls your strings, and you dance. Somebody pulls your strings, and you cry. Neither the tears are yours, nor the smiles are yours. What is yours?

You don't have a soul. Life then is a very meaningless affair.

But without God, the whole responsibility comes upon you. Then you are a free agent, independent.

And you have been here forever, in different forms, and you will be here forever, in different forms.

Nobody can destroy you, because nobody has created you. You don't have a beginning; you can't have an end.

Freedom from God is the greatest freedom that man needs. And freedom from God is freedom from many other things - freedom from the priesthood, freedom from your bogus theologians, freedom from the churches, temples, mosques. It will bring a great relief to you. But it cannot happen through reaction - not by anger, but by understanding.

I don't teach you to be angry, I don't teach you to be hateful.

I only teach you to be understanding of the whole situation, and out of that understanding you will blossom like a lotus.

Then life is your own. You can make anything that you want to make of it. Then you are the creator of your life. You may not be the creator of the existence - there is no need to be. That is a very dictatorial idea, a fascist idea. Those who believe in God are all fascist, because God has all the powers. It is not democratic, you have never chosen it. And his power is absolute, over your life, over your death.

Without God, a great Himalayan burden will be relieved from your chest. You will feel wings arising in you; for the first time, the joy of creating your own life, making it the way you want it, because there is nobody who is sending ten commandments. There is nobody who is saying to you that this is to be done, and this is not to be done. There is nobody you are obedient to.

Freedom from God will bring a strange thing: there will be no theist, there will be no atheist, because the atheist is simply a reaction of the theist. For the first time, humanity can be one, no divisions.

What divides all the religions? Just small details, meaningless details, about their idea of God.

But if there is no God, all those differences disappear. Then man can come closer to man, become more intimate with other human beings, and we can create humanity not in somebody else's image.

We can create humanity according to our hopes, according to our desires; we can create man the way we want man to be.

God absent, man becomes a creator.

And this is such a gift that no other gift can be greater than that.

But it will not happen through anger and hatred and disbelief. All those things have been tried and failed. It can happen only through understanding - just seeing the whole thing as a fiction. The moment you understand that it is a fiction created out of fear - with God disappears the whole army of the priests and the monks and the nuns, and all the nonsense that they have created.

I was in Nepal just before I came here. A beautiful, old Buddhist monk - the head of all the Buddhist monks in Nepal, equivalent to a pope - just out of curiosity came to listen to me, and then he continued to come.

But how conditioning cripples people! When I would welcome everybody with folded hands... This is one of the most beautiful things that has come out of the East. It means, "I bow down to your divinity whoever you are. Your outer appearance does not mean anything; inside you are an eternal divine being. I bow down with folded hands."

And why with folded hands? That also has a philosophical significance. Man's mind is divided into two hemispheres, right and left. They are not in any communication with each other, they don't know that the other exists. One is verbal, linguistic; the other is nonverbal, active. And the hands are the extensions of the mind. The right hand is connected with the left mind; this is the active part. The left hand is connected with the right mind.

Putting both these hands together means, "With my wholeness, with my totality, with my man and with my woman, with my mind and with my heart, I bow down to your dignity." There are many ways of welcoming people, but I don't think there is any other way which is better, which has some spiritual significance.

I would bow down every day, and I would look at the Buddhist priest, who was ashamed. He understood, he loved me; more and more he listened to me. He was going around Kathmandu meeting the ministers, the chief minister and others, and saying that they should come at least once to listen before they made any decisions.

But repeatedly for one month, I saw many times that his hands would want to respond to me, but his deep conditioning... The Buddhist monk has been taught that he is higher, so others can bow down to him with folded hands - he cannot. He can only bless them with one of his hands raised.

Now, he was in a difficulty. He could not bless me - that would look awkward - and he could not bow down to me with folded hands, because that would go against his conditioning. And I could see that his hands moved, and he was holding them together. He wanted... but he must have been afraid.

He was the head of the whole order of Buddhist monks in Nepal. If somebody came to know - and they would come to know because thousands of other people would be seeing him doing it.

The Jaina monks cannot do that, they can only bless you. The Hindu monks cannot do that, they can only bless you. They are higher beings. With God disappearing, all these ugly creatures will also disappear. Their whole support, their whole nourishment, is the fiction of God. They are dependent on it. If you take away God you have taken away the very earth underneath their feet.

And man will feel so unchained, for the first time free to be himself, with no Peeping Tom. God is a Peeping Tom. In theological terms he is called omnipresent, meaning everywhere present: even in your bathroom, be aware. Don't undress! - God is present.

I have heard about a nun who never used to take her clothes off, even while taking a bath. Other nuns asked, "This is a strange kind of behavior! The doors are closed - why don't you take your clothes off?"

She said, "It is simple. God is present everywhere: closing the door or not closing the door does not make any difference. I cannot undress in front of somebody."

The theological term 'omnipresent' can be translated into the human language as Peeping Tom.

And he is not a very gentle man either, because this guy was the representative, this guy was the person responsible for making poor Mary, a virgin girl, pregnant. It is dangerous too. Peeping Toms are not dangerous; they only peep through the keyholes. What can they do from the keyholes? But this guy is not trustworthy. Poor Mary... and God makes her pregnant.

If Jesus had any guts he should have been against this God. But he was not against this God, he was against his poor father, his poor mother. He insulted them continually, saying, "You are not my mother and father; my real father is far above in the heavens."

And just the other day I saw the newspapers. How can people be so ugly?... One journalist had asked, two days ago, what I had to say about a pop singer, Madonna. And I said exactly what I feel about her: I said I hate her.

The newspapers and the journalists are using it to say that I hate Jesus Christ's mother, the madonna. Sometimes one thinks: Are we living in a world of insane people, or what? Why should I hate poor Mary? I should hate the man who made her pregnant - it was a rape! And I feel sorry for poor Joseph.

But can you see how people are cunning? They ask me a question and then they distort it. One could not have imagined that this distortion would come out in the papers - that I hate Jesus' mother, the madonna. Why should I hate her? She has already suffered much in the hands of your God, in the hands of Jesus Christ, and perhaps in the hands of the contemporary population. Christians may not say it, but the contemporary people could not have believed that God had made her pregnant; there must have been some stupid guy around.

Why does Jesus go on insisting so much in each of his statements, "I am the only begotten son of God"? Some psychoanalysis is needed. It seems he is afraid that if he does not insist on it, then he is a bastard. He has to insist on it, that he is the only begotten son of God. He never says a single word of respect about his poor father, Joseph, and the whole of Christianity has forgotten about Joseph - no statue, no church.

This woman must have suffered condemnation from everybody, nobody can believe how much. I know a case - one of my friends, a doctor, told me that one woman came to him. She was not pregnant, but her period had stopped, and she had not been in any sexual contact with any man.

So then she thought God had made her pregnant.

The doctor was telling me, "I tried telling her, 'You are not pregnant. I will give you medicine and the period will start coming. It happens to many women, some hormonal imbalance can prevent the period - it is nothing to be worried about.' But she was not ready to take the medicine."

She was afraid that this doctor was going to destroy the child that she was carrying. Finally the doctor said, "Whatever the result may be, what you have proved to me is that God certainly does these things, and he is still doing them. He must be really very old, ancient; eternity has passed, and still he is going on making poor virgins pregnant."

If Jesus had guts he would have been against God. He would have been in favour of his father, Joseph, because the man never condemned Mary. He could have thrown her out. In those days, that was the tradition: if your wife was having fun with somebody else it was intolerable. But Joseph never said anything to Mary, he never said anything to Jesus; all that we know is that Jesus continually made undignified comments.

But what have I to do with Mary? I had no idea that you call Mary, the madonna; otherwise I would have been cautious and made it clear that it was a pop singer that I was talking about.

Today's music, singing, is almost insane. It has lost the beauty of the classical music, classical singing. They had some spiritual value. Just listening to them you could have fallen into silence.

You could have experienced a moment of meditation. Today's music, singing, dancing, is all sexual.

Young people, punks and skinheads and all kinds of idiots, become fans of these people because they are bigger idiots than them.

Anger or hate is not going to help. You have to let God slip out of your hands, very silently, without making any noise.

Question 2:

It is not.

Without utopia, nothing is going to be better is a fundamental truth. Utopia simply means that we are not satisfied with the society we are living in; that we are utterly frustrated with the structure that has been imposed upon us; that there is tremendous discontent about everything.

Utopia is simply a desire to find a better society, a better humanity, a better educational system, a better togetherness, a better state of relationship between man and woman, between parents and children.

Utopia is simply a disgust with the status quo.

All the vested interests would like to support the sentence that the idea of utopia is bullshit, because they would like you just to be satisfied and contented, like buffaloes, eating grass - the same grass their whole life - as if they are born only to eat that grass, and then die.

You will be surprised to know a few things. Have you seen animals making love? Then you must have noted that they don't seem happy while they are making love. They don't seem to be euphoric.

They seem to be in a despair, sad, as if out of some necessity, a biological force, they have to make love.

That is the reason that when their season of love is passed they don't even look at the female, they don't look at the male; all connections are finished, there is not even friendship. Their love is something mechanical, forced. It is not a joy, a pleasure. So for what are they living? - just eating grass, and then one day dying?

The vested interests in the human world would also like you to be like buffaloes. Remain satisfied in your poverty, remain satisfied in your sickness, remain satisfied in your death, remain satisfied in your misery, suffering, anguish. There should be no trouble, no reward, no effort to make things better, so they can go on exploiting you without any hindrance, without even feeling guilt that they are exploiting you.

There are all kinds of parasites: the priests are there, the politicians are there. Their whole interest is that you remain in a state of coma, you remain in a state of sleepwalking... just sleepy and dozey, somehow doing the work but never bothering that things can be better.

And they have convinced people for thousands of years that this is how life is, nothing more is possible. Suffering is your fate; despair is your destiny. It is all willed by God; you cannot change it.

In India they say that not even a leaf of a tree can move without the will of God. So what else can you do?

It is not a coincidence that for ten thousand years India has never seen any revolution. And India has the worst social system; one fourth of the Hindus have lived almost like cattle. They are untouchable.

They have been reduced to being even worse than animals. Animals are not untouchable, but those human beings are untouchable. Not only are those human beings untouchable, their shadows are also untouchable. If a shadow of an untouchable person falls over you, you have to take a bath to purify yourself.

And they have convinced these people for thousands of years that this is their fate, nothing can be done about it. In India, nobody has ever written a book like Sir Thomas More's UTOPIA. Not that Indians have not written anything; they have written perhaps the most significant and voluminous literature. But there is not a single book which gives hope of some kind, a possibility of change, a revolution. No, these words are not used at all.

This is what they want all over the world. So whoever has said that utopia, the very idea of utopia, is bullshit, is himself bullshitting. It is his own bullshit.

Utopia is certainly an absolute necessity.

Once humanity gets free from all fetters and imprisonments, once we have made utopia a reality, then perhaps utopia may not be necessary. But I don't think so, because we can never make anything perfect. Perfection is not part of existence; everything remains imperfect. It goes on becoming better and better, it goes on coming closer and closer to perfection, but it never becomes perfect. And there is a reason, a very significant reason, why it is so: the moment anything becomes perfect, it dies.

Perfection is death.

The vice versa is not true. I am not saying that death is perfection; otherwise everybody who dies will become perfect. Death is not perfection, but perfection is certainly death, because once you bring anything to perfection, then growth stops. Then there is nothing more, nowhere to go, nothing else to do.

Human energy needs a constant flow to remain alive. It is like a river, not like a pond. It needs to go on flowing, changing, in different plains and mountains, until it reaches to the ocean.

A pond simply goes nowhere. That's how the vested interests want the society to be - a pond which goes nowhere, which simply evaporates and dies and leaves dirty mud behind.

Life energies are a river, and a river that never reaches to the ocean, a river that is always seeking and searching, that is always finding - but there is always more to find.

I am reminded of a Sufi story.

A woodcutter was very old, without any family - his wife had died and he had no children. Just to feed himself in his old age - and he must have been eighty - he had to work hard to go to the forest to cut wood and sell it. At the most, what he got was enough for him to survive.

Every day in the forest he used to pass a Sufi mystic sitting under a tree. And just as it is in the Eastern tradition, he would touch the feet of the mystic, take his blessings, and go on for his work.

The mystic started feeling sad for the man. One day he said, "You are a strange man, you don't have any curiosity, because if you just go a little deeper into the forest, you can find a copper mine.

And just one day's work will be enough for seven days' food; right now, every day you have to work.

Even I have started feeling sadness for you. You just go a little ahead."

The man was reluctant because he knew the forest... but who knows? Perhaps the mystic was right, because he had also been in the forest. As long as he could remember, the mystic was under the tree. Just to give it a try, not being certain if it was going to happen... But he found a copper mine.

He collected enough copper, and that was really sufficient for one week.

He rested, and after one week when he came back, he was looking a little better, healthier, a little younger. He touched the feet of the mystic and said, "This time I am touching your feet not just traditionally, I am really grateful."

The mystic said, "So soon? You are a fool! If you go a little deeper, you will find a silver mine. One day's work will be enough for one month."

The man could not believe it - his whole life he had lived in misery and suffering. But the mystic had proved right the first time; perhaps, who knows, he was right again. Or maybe the mystic was simply joking or making a fool of him, but there was no harm in going.

He went a little deeper, and found a silver mine. He said, "My God! The whole of my life I was wasting cutting wood. It was hard work, then selling was hard. There are so many woodcutters, so much competition."

He gathered some silver, and it was really enough for one month. He lived luxuriously and comfortably. After one month he came and just fell at the feet of the mystic and said, "I am truly grateful, and I am sorry that there were moments when I doubted."

The mystic said, "You have still not understood me. Go a little deeper."

The man said, "For what? I am living in luxury!"

He said, "You don't know what luxury is. Just a little further, and you will find a gold mine."

It was beyond the conception of the woodcutter to have a gold mine, but he went. Now there was no doubt: this man certainly knew.

He found the gold, and the mystic said, "This will be enough for one year; perhaps I may not be able to see you for one year now."

The woodcutter said, "No, I will come once in a while just to touch your feet. You are a man of miracles! Why do you go on sitting here, when you know so much about gold and silver?"

The next time he came to the mystic, he was looking a totally different man - beautiful clothes, beautiful shoes - and he had certainly become younger, healthier. He had gained weight; otherwise before he was just a skeleton.

It took a little time for the mystic to recognize him, that this was the old woodcutter. He said, "So, things are going well?"

The man said, "They are going tremendously well, but I just remembered last night... perhaps there is something more beyond this."

The mystic said, "Now, finally, I have been able to reach to your heart. Now you have hope, now you have a promising future. Yes, there is something more beyond it: a diamond mine."

The woodcutter said, "My God, why didn't you say it in the first place? Why should I waste my time with copper and silver and gold?"

The mystic said, "You would not have believed me, you would not have trusted me. You would not have gone if I had told you about diamonds. I had to lead you slowly, slowly. Now you have come on your own to ask me, and this is a good sign. You are no longer satisfied, contented, although you are living more luxuriously than anybody else.

The woodcutter said, "That's true. I will give it a try." He went and found the diamonds. When he was coming back - this was for the first time that coming back he also went to the mystic, to touch his feet - he said, "Now perhaps I may not be coming at all. These diamonds are enough for my whole life. That's why I have come to touch your feet."

The mystic said, "But there is something more beyond it."

The woodcutter said, "No, there is nothing beyond diamonds. What can there be beyond diamonds?

Now you are just kidding!"

The mystic said, "Believe me. Come at least once. There is something beyond diamonds."

And the second day the man appeared - he could not sleep the whole night. He had enough diamonds to live his whole life as a king, but the next day he came. The mystic was sitting with closed eyes - this was for the first time. The woodcutter touched his feet, but the mystic was simply as if he was a statue. He didn't move, he didn't receive his gratitude.

He shook the mystic. He said, "What has happened? You were going to show me something that is beyond."

The mystic said, "That's what I am showing you. Beyond the diamonds is your own being... just a little further on. Unless you discover the mine of your own being, you have not found anything."

The woodcutter said, "Now I can understand why you are always sitting here, under this tree, never going and bothering about diamonds. Now I will sit by your side under this tree until I find this mine you are talking about. It is very difficult. The other was very easy - going out a little more, a little more. Now you are changing the whole direction."

While the woodcutter sat silently in the forest in the presence of the mystic - soaking his presence in, his silence, his loving being - the whole day passed, and when the sun was setting the man was amazed. He opened his eyes. He said, "You should have told me before - I have been passing by here. You are not a man of compassion. For years I have been cutting wood, dragging the load on my own shoulders, and you simply sat here enjoying this inner feeling, this inner joy, and you wouldn't tell me."

The mystic said, "You would not have listened. First diamonds are needed. Now you can go home, because the mine of your treasures is within you. Just remember one thing: go on and on, never stop. There is no full stop, because every full stop is a death."

We may be able to create something better than all the utopians of the world have dreamt about, but the utopia will always exist on the horizon, which looks so close that you could reach - just now, within an hour - where the earth is touching the sky. But as you go closer to the horizon, the horizon goes on receding back, the distance between you and the horizon always remains the same. And this is the whole secret of growth and evolution.

Miracles are possible, but no miracle is going to be the perfection. Perfection is not possible, and it is good that it is not possible. It keeps you going, it keeps you alive, it keeps you flowing.

I am all for utopia, and I know that the ideas about utopia will change. Whatever we have achieved will not be part of utopia, but something else will become part of it. There is no other way. Man's evolution is multidimensional, his consciousness can grow to infinity, and it should grow to infinity.

Question 3:

I am not against politicians; I am against the disease they are suffering from, the disease of inferiority complex. Any politician who has a little intelligence can change the whole scene. He should not be a politician, he should be a man in politics. His humanity should not be overpowered by politics.

Politics should be just like plumbing, a profession. He should do it as expertly as possible, but the moment he comes home he should not bring it with him.

I used to stay in Calcutta in the house of the chief justice of the supreme court. His wife told me, "My husband only listens to you. Just tell him that at least in the house he should not be the chief justice of the supreme court. Even in bed he's the chief justice of the supreme court. The moment he enters the house, the children stop playing, everybody starts looking busy. The moment he leaves the house, it feels like a great burden is relieved, everybody is happy and smiling. And this does not look good, this is not right. But he only knows how to order... obedience."

That night I said to the chief justice, "You have forgotten that you are a man too, you have forgotten that you love a woman. A chief justice has nothing to do with a woman. A chief justice has nothing to do with love. You have forgotten that you have children. A chief justice has nothing to do with children.

"Your being the chief justice is only a profession. But you have forgotten yourself. When you come from the court, you should leave everything in the court. Come home as a human being. You may not be aware how your family is suffering. They feel joyous when you are not in the home, and they feel afraid when you are in the home. This is not a good character certificate for you."

He said, "But I never thought about it, and nobody told me. Perhaps it is right."

And that night he apologized to the children, to the servants, to his wife. He said to them, "From tomorrow you will find me just a man. The house is not a court, but I had simply forgotten. I became so identified with my profession that I was lost in it. I tortured you all, and I have tortured myself too.

"I was wondering why my children don't love me, why my wife does not love me, why everybody looks afraid. I was wondering what is the matter, that everything falls silent, servants who were sitting idly or playing cards just start looking busy. Now I know, it was my fault." I visited the family twice more and it was a totally different family.

The question is always of simple understanding. If you are in contact with the politicians and if you want to change them - perhaps your are related to a politician or at least after a few years the politicians are bound to come to you for votes - make one single point continuously, wherever they go: "Promise us only one thing - we don't want any other promise, we want only one promise - that you will remain a man and you will not become just a politician; that politics will be your profession, but it will not change your humanity."

Ask the politicians for only one promise, and tell them that you can take care of every other promise:

"You will be in power so do whatever you want to do to improve the conditions, but as far as we are concerned, remember we want to see you as a human being, not as a politician, a president, a prime minister... no. We want you just to be one amongst us."

Take that promise, insist on it again and again; wherever they go and meet you, insist on it. Perhaps, if all over the world people start insisting on it, it may wake up the sleeping people, because it is not doing them good either.

Politicians have lost love, they have lost real respect. Once they are no longer in the post, nobody cares about them; in fact, it is very difficult to find where your former presidents are. Do you know where Jimmy Carter is, and what the poor fellow is doing? You will know only when he dies. Then a small news headline in the papers will appear, that the ex-president of America, Jimmy Carter, has died.

This will not happen if the people in posts and in power remain human. Their humanity will remain with them. And if people see their humanity, they will be loved whether they are in power or not. In fact they will be loved more when they are not in power.

Just spread understanding, the way we want to educate the whole world. I want to spread understanding to the whole world about simple problems - it is not difficult.

I have heard that one morning in the biggest church in New York, a hippie-looking fellow entered.

The archbishop was a little afraid because the hippie looked like Jesus. Perhaps Jesus was the first hippie... long hair.

And the archbishop asked the man, "Who are you?"

He said, "You can't recognize me? And you are my archbishop, you represent me; you seem to be stupid. I am Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God." And he looked almost like Jesus.

The poor archbishop could not figure out what to do. He had never thought that in his life he is going to meet Jesus Christ. He immediately phoned to Rome, to pope the Polack, and said, "A hippie-looking man is standing here in the church and he says he is Jesus Christ."

The pope said, "My God, has he come really?"

The bishop said, "You just tell me what I should do."

And the pope said, "Just look busy and inform the police before things get out of hand."

Out of fear people start looking busy.

These politicians you think are so busy... You are wrong. I know them very closely, intimately.

I was staying with one of the prime ministers of India, Lalbahadur Shastri. A phone call came from somebody who wanted to see him urgently. Lalbahadur Shastri said, "I am too busy - this week it is impossible. Enquire from my secretary about next week."

I said to him, "You are not busy. We have been sitting and gossipping and laughing; you are not busy! Why are you saying that?"

He said, "You don't understand politics. A politician always has to be busy. If he is not, he has to pretend; it makes him look great."

I said, "It may be that I don't know political jargon, but to me it seems to be inhuman. You are not busy. You could have called the man. You could have talked with him. You should have been human.

Why should you be prime minister for twenty-four hours a day? Who chose you to be prime minister for twenty-four hours? You are prime minister when you are in the office. Here you are in the home, on Sunday, and you are not willing to meet someone who has come from far away... This is ugly.

You phone him back."

He said, "You always say strange things. I should phone him? I am the prime minister."

I said, "Forget all that nonsense. You are prime minister because of these people; you are their servant. That's what you have been saying. And now your master wants to meet you and the servant says he is busy, 'Make an appointment with my secretary in one week'!" I said, "Either you phone him or I am going to leave your house this very moment. And I am going to expose you to the public, that you were not busy."

He said, "Wait, wait. I am going to phone." And he phoned, and it turned out to be nobody other than his old uncle who had come from the village, because he was very old and he wanted to see him - perhaps he would die soon, and he may not be able to see him again.

Lalbahadur Shastri apologized to me. I said, "Not to me. Ask your uncle for an apology."

The poor old man did not know how to phone so he told somebody else to phone - he had never used a phone. He was carrying a few clothes with him and that was all that he had brought.

And he said, "I have just come to see you. I will not waste your time. You are a busy man, but before I die I wanted to see..."

You just have to teach your politicians - spread the understanding that they have to be more human.

I am not against politicians; I am against the political profession destroying their humanity. It is possible to separate both, then they can do better, serve better. And if humanity remains beating in their hearts, we can hope that they will not serve death, they will serve life.

Okay, Maneesha.