The logic of the ostrich

Question 1:

I do not have a philosophy; hence nothing can make any difference to it. I have a way of life, and there is no possibility which can modify it because it is not a mind projection, it is my innermost being and its experience.

Whatever happens to my body or to my mind is not going to change me.

I am the watcher on the hills.

My mind and my body are far away.

Secondly, you are asking if it has given me any resentment. That too is impossible.

I see things as they are.

If somebody is ugly it does not make me resentful.

If somebody is disgusting it does not make me resentful, it simply makes me compassionate.

I have never felt more love for America than I feel now - for the people of America, the land of America. It is under an ugly government, a fascist government which is pretending to be democratic, but it is not; it is pure hypocrisy. I am not resentful against the government of America. Whatever they did to me I have taken note of it and I have seen their real face.

I am going to expose that face to the whole world, not out of resentment, but with a hope that perhaps this exposure may change them. Even if they do not change, they will lose face before the world. Either they have to change themselves or they will be losing millions of people around the world who would have been their friends.

I was one of their friends.

My people were their friends.

They have unnecessarily lost millions of friends.

I feel sorry for them, but the question of resentment does not arise for the simple reason that my heart has no space for resentment, no space for anger, no space for hatred. Even if they had killed me, I would have died with immense love towards them, and that love would not be the same as Jesus Christ's.

For two thousand years Christian theologians have been misinterpreting Jesus. His last words on the cross were, "Father, forgive these people because they know not what they are doing." If you analyze this statement, it has many implications. First, you can forgive only if you have already become angry. Asking God to forgive them does not show that God is angry - because nobody knows about God - but that Jesus is angry and resentful. Jesus was trying his best to follow his philosophy; but that philosophy was not his way of life. That is why a great effort is needed to follow it; it is not spontaneous. So first, to ask God to forgive these people shows resentment, anger.

Secondly, the reason he is asking for them to be forgiven is very egoistic. He is saying, "They do not know what they are doing" - he knows; they do not know. That was the whole problem for which he was being crucified; he was pretending to be the only begotten son of God, that his words were directly from God, that he knows and nobody else knows. Everybody is ignorant. He is stubborn.

Even at the last moment he does not forget his stubbornness. He is not humble. For yourself to think that you know and nobody else knows is pure egoism.

If the American government had killed me, as they had made all the preparations for, I would not have had any resentment for them because I cannot have any resentment in my heart. I could only have loved them. I could not have prayed because there is no God to pray to. If I had something to say to existence, I would have said, "These people know exactly what they are doing. Make them a little more aware so that they don't go on doing the same thing to other people.

To me it matters nothing; I have attained the ultimate experience of my life, now death does not matter. Why should I feel resentful? - they are not stopping me from anything, they are not taking anything away from me; they cannot take away my experience, they cannot take away my being...

but they know exactly what they are doing. They should not do it to others, because others may not yet have experienced the light, the innermost shrine of their being. They may still be empty, and if they are killed their life is simply wasted - one great opportunity lost.

I have no philosophy.

I have only a way of life which is spontaneous.

I don't have a program, a discipline to follow, a certain creed to live accordingly.

I live moment to moment.

I do not look backward; I do not look forward.

I am absolutely centered in the moment - here, now. Those two words define my way of life.

Question 2:

I would love to settle in the south of France, but I don't have much communion with French people; they are the most unknown people to me on the earth. The reason is that every country has developed certain characteristics; the French have developed a characteristic that they think that they are at the top as far as philosophy is concerned. It is not true, but this gives them a closedness; whoever thinks in this way becomes closed.

In India we have many languages - thirty languages. It is almost a continent like Europe, and each language has as many people as European countries. In India, the parallel to the French are the Bengalis. They have the same attitude that their language is best, their literature is best, their philosophy is best... and they do not have to learn anything from anybody.

You will be surprised...

I have been visiting Calcutta for thirty years continually, but in thirty years I could not manage to have any communion with the Bengalis. In Calcutta, non-Bengalis were coming to see me, non-Bengalis were listening to me, non-Bengalis were becoming sannyasins. And I enquired again and again, "What is the problem? Calcutta is the capital of the Bengalis. It is their homeland, but I don't see a single Bengali."

They said, "The difficulty with the Bengalis is that they have very closed minds."

The same is the situation with the French mind in Europe. In Europe almost every other nation has thousands of sannyasins except France. They think they do not have to communicate with other human beings; they are self-satisfied. It is a dangerous disease to be so closed.

If you know... if your philosophy is the best, if your literature is the best, if your language is the best, then too you have to share, you have to communicate. You have so many good things - are you going to hoard them?

Remember a fundamental law of life: Anything that you don't share dies. Share and it grows; share and it gets new dimensions to it.

So I am not saying the French don't have great philosophy; they have. I am not saying that they don't have great literature; they have. I am not saying that their language is not one of the most beautiful; it is. But these are not reasons to close your mind, these should be reasons to make you more open so you can share.

Howsoever great a philosophy is, it is never perfect. Nothing is perfect in this world, and you can always learn from others. You can always make it more perfect, you can always give it more juice, more life.

So I do not have much personal contact with the French people; hence I cannot say much about them. But I am going to come, and I will try my hardest to break the ice. And there must be a few people who are ready to be open and friendly. I just need a few people, and if they are put aflame, then the fire becomes wild very soon and it spreads to every corner of the country. I feel perhaps the closed mind is afraid.

I remember, I was traveling with a friend and the ticket collector came. I showed him my ticket, and my friend started looking in his bags and luggage and this pocket and that pocket, but I saw that he was not looking in the right pocket on his coat. He was looking everywhere and I said to him, "You are forgetting to look at the right side pocket of your coat."

He said, "Don't mention it."

I said, "Are you mad? You are looking for the ticket!"

He said, "That is my only hope, and I don't want to get disillusioned so soon. If it is not in that pocket, then it is not anywhere, so I am saving that pocket; I am not going to look in it."

People become closed. Perhaps they are afraid that there may be better philosophies - the world is big - and there are; there may be sweeter languages, and there are; there may be better literature, and there is. It is better to keep your eyes closed so you can remain self-satisfied that you have the best in the world.

This is called the logic of the ostrich: seeing the enemy the ostrich immediately puts his head deep into the sand. He cannot see the enemy anywhere because in the sand his eyes are closed.

Naturally, if there is no enemy...

I feel that the French people are ostriches. Somebody needs to pull their heads out of the sand and tell them that the world is big: "Jean-Paul Sartre is not the only philosopher, your painters are not the only painters, and your musicians are not the only musicians!"

The world is one and we should not keep apart. We should not create citadels around us; they are dangerous. They give you strange egoistic feelings and don't allow you to mix with the human beings around you.

I have heard that a Frenchman, even if he understands English, will pretend that he does not understand. Even if he can speak English, he will speak French; he will not speak English.

This is something inhuman. It does not show the superiority of your language; it simply shows your egoistic idea.

Your language may be superior, but speak it, spread it, exchange it with people. Let others also enjoy your literature, your music, your language, your philosophy. But that is possible only if you start enjoying other people's literature, and other people's philosophies. They all have their own dimensions, and life is so vast that nobody can be exhaustive.

There is something which only Chuang Tzu has, but he is Chinese.

There is something which only Dostoevsky has, but he is Russian.

There is something which only Jean-Paul Sartre has, but he is French.

There is something only Nagarjuna has, but he is Indian.

And there is something which only Basho has, but he is Japanese.

They all are unique, incomparable.

All languages have their own different qualities, and all people have contributed to life.

But the French have lived in isolation. That isolation should be broken; it will be helpful for the whole world, and it will be helpful for the French people too. I am coming to try my best.

Question 3:

I don't think about politicians at all; they are all of the same breed. Just as you can taste the sea anywhere and it is salty, you can taste the politician - everywhere he is cunning. It may be more or less, there may be differences of degree, but there are not differences of quality.

As for socialism, whether it is French or Indian or Greek or of other countries, socialism is a compromise. Deep down you have started feeling that communism is right, but your whole vested interests are in favor of capitalism. Some compromise is needed, some middle path between capitalism and communism. That's what socialism is; it is half-hearted from both the sides.

I would like something better than communism.

Socialism is not better than communism; no compromise can be better. It is really our failure that we cannot devise a system which is higher than communism. It is possible, there is no problem about it; we will just have to drop our few vested interests, and our society can be on a higher level than any communist society in the world.

For example, the Soviet Union has been trying for seventy years but has utterly failed; people are still poor. Although now poverty is equally distributed, that is not a consolation. Yes, it helps in a way, because now the poor people don't have any comparison. There is nobody rich so they feel equality has come - but this is the very lowest kind of equality.

I would like a society of people who are equally rich, not equally poor. And modern science is capable, modern technology is capable of creating a society which is equally rich. But the problem is, the rich would not like it. If all are equally rich then their egos feel hurt, then they are no longer rich. If all are equally rich, then there are going to be many problems for people who have become accustomed to a poor society - for example, the church, which depends on the poor people; only the poor go to the church.

The rich, the educated, the cultured already know that it is all nonsense. They will not say so - they are cultured enough, they are sophisticated; they will not say so. And if it is needed just as a formality, they may once in a while visit the church too, but they know it is all nonsense. Their lives prove that it is all nonsense; they are not living according to the principles of any religion.

Only the poor are the customers of your churches, synagogues. If the poor disappear, synagogues and churches and temples cannot exist. Only the poor go there in the hope perhaps if in this life they are not comfortable, after death they can enter into paradise, inherit the kingdom of God. Nobody asks them: What is the relationship between poverty and the inheritance of the kingdom of God?

What rational relationship is there? It seems more logical that the rich people should inherit the kingdom of God because they have some experience of richness, they are experienced in luxury.

The poor people have no experience of comfort, no experience of luxury. They will be in trouble in paradise.

I remember, I used to stay in a maharaja's palace in Indore. The maharaja was a very colorful person. He was dethroned while India was under British rule, and the reason was that he was making a palace greater than Buckingham Palace, better than Buckingham Palace. He had beautiful palaces in Indore, and although he was dethroned, his son was enthroned. The maharaja was an old man and he loved me very much.

The first time I stayed in his palace, up to the middle of the night I could not sleep for the simple reason that the mattresses were so comfortable that they woke me again and again. Whenever I moved, the whole mattress moved; it was like a water bed. Finally, in the middle of the night I decided that this is not going to help, I am not accustomed to this luxury. It is better to sleep on the floor, and nobody is here to look at me.... So I slept on the floor, because up to the middle of the night I had not slept. I slept late.

The maharaja came; he saw me sleeping on the floor, and he said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "On that mattress sleep was impossible for me, for the simple reason that I was not accustomed to it."

In Mohammedan heaven there are beautiful girls who always remain fixed for eternity at the age of sixteen, and they are especially to serve the people who come into paradise. Now, what are the poor people going to do? In the Mohammedan paradise, rivers are not of water but of wine. The poor people have never tasted wine, and the religion here goes on saying that wine or any alcoholic beverage is not good, is not virtuous. What are these people going to do? They will die of thirst because water is not available at all; either you drink wine or you stay thirsty.

I have heard about a saint who lived in austerity, immense self-torture; he was a perfect masochist.

He died. He had a great following. One of his close disciples could not tolerate the separation; he also died the next day. When he reached paradise, of course the first thing was to find the master.

And he could not believe... under a beautiful tree the master was sitting and he could not believe his eyes: Marilyn Monroe was naked, hugging the master. He thought, Certainly my master was one of the greatest masters. This is a proof, he is being rewarded.

He went, fell on the earth, touched the feet of the master and said, "We were right that you are the greatest master. Now I can see how much you are being rewarded."

At that moment Marilyn Monroe said, "You idiot, shut up! I am not his reward; he is my punishment."

If everybody is rich, comfortable, happy, educated, cultured, is able to enjoy music, dance, drama, and all different dimensions of higher values, who will care to go to the churches? Who would bother about politicians, because now what more can they promise? All that they used to promise, you have got.

The politicians are afraid.

They want the world to remain divided into poor and rich.

The priests want the world to be divided into classes.

They are the powerful people.

They are preventing science and technology from changing the face of the earth. Socialism is not the need; the need is for a higher form of communism. And when I say a higher form of communism, I mean a classless society - equally rich, with equal opportunities, with no dictatorship of the proletariat, with no democracy even but only a meritocracy. People of merit should have the destiny of the country in their hands. Just as you cannot decide truth by voting, you cannot decide merit by voting. If truth was dependent on a democratic way, then no truth would ever win. Lies would win because the majority will not understand the truth.

It was said when Albert Einstein was alive that only twelve persons in the whole world understood what exactly the theory of relativity meant. Now, if the theory of relativity had to be decided by majority voting, it was going to lose. People could not even understand it. Even Einstein was incapable of explaining it to people, to laymen.

If truth cannot be decided democratically, then merit also cannot be decided by election. Merit should be decided by the acts of the person, his education, his contribution. If a man contributes to education, writes about education, gives new dimensions and new programs for meditation, for education, helps to improve the intelligence of people, then he should be given a chance to manage the education of the country - not a politician who can manage to get more votes. And we have experts in education, experts in finance, experts in every department - geniuses, but those geniuses have no power.

Power goes to mediocre people. This is strange. Power should be in the hands of the best; only then we can hope something good can come out of it. My own idea is something better than democracy, better than communism: a state of meritocracy. We have so many universities; these universities can supply us with all our needs, all the people we need.

Albert Einstein died in great despair because he created the atom bomb, but he could not prevent its use - and it was used absolutely unnecessarily. The war was going to finish anyway - at the most in two more weeks - but President Truman was in a hurry. He was afraid that if the war ended, then how was he going to experiment with the atom bombs? So before the war ended the atom bombs had to be dropped. They killed more than two hundred thousand people, destroyed two beautiful living cities... into graveyards. Immense suffering... Perhaps never before was such suffering seen, and the man who created it was helpless.

All the scientists of the world are simply serving the war machine. They should serve humanity; they should serve life - not war, not death.

We have to go through an absolutely radical change.

There are many countries which are socialist because the name gives a certain respectability - that they are not capitalist for one thing, that they are not communist for another - they are socialist.

I also am in favor of the individual: I am not in favor of society, because we have depended on society for centuries, but all our revolutions have failed. This time revolution has to come through the individual, not through the society.

Society is nonexistential. Socialism means nothing; the reality is the individual. And the individual can be changed, can be transformed, and if more and more individuals are transformed they are freed from the past conditionings, they are freed from their retardedness which has been imposed on them. If they are freed from complete discontinuity with the past and become open for the future, we can create societies which will not be socialistic, which will be absolutely individualist.

Of course those individuals will be able to love, who will be able to be together, who will be able to enhance each other's lives. They will create a togetherness - but not something of the old society again repeated - a very loose togetherness which keeps everybody absolutely free; a loose network of individuals where nobody is forced to do something or to be something, but is capable of just being himself as he is - and is accepted with dignity.

Question 4:

I certainly admire my people most.

Question 5:

Fascism is the worst, and meritocracy is the best.

The criterion is anarchism. Whichever regime is closer to anarchism is better - the closest to anarchism is the best - whichever is farther away from anarchism is worse. Fascism is the farthest, dictatorship the farthest; they are the worst.

Anarchism is my criterion.

The best regime can only be meritocracy, which will be very close to anarchism. Just one step more and all regimes disappear.

Anarchism... No government means absolute freedom, and freedom is the ultimate value of life.

Question 6:

I have among my sannyasins forty percent Jews.

I love Jews more than I love anybody else for the simple reason that they have suffered the most; they deserve the love of everyone. For centuries they have been suffering being killed, burned, raped... everything ugly and inhuman has been done to them. How can I be anti-Semitic? This is how your yellow journalism goes on spreading lies.

I have made a statement about Adolf Hitler which has been distorted. I have said that Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi are not very different. Immediately journalists thought I am admiring Adolf Hitler, comparing him with Mahatma Gandhi. I was simply condemning Mahatma Gandhi - but it seems stupidity has no limits.

I made it clear why I was saying this. I was saying this because Mahatma Gandhi was not a nonviolent person. Nonviolence was his politics; he used it and used it very cleverly, but in his own personal life he was a very violent man. And I have given many examples of his violent acts which cannot be interpreted in any other way.

For example, his own eldest son, Haridas Gandhi, wanted to go to school, but Gandhi would not allow him. He was against education. He was against everything that had been invented after the spinning wheel - and when the spinning wheel was invented nobody knows. It seems everything else that you have got came after the spinning wheel. He wanted to destroy everything after the spinning wheel; that had to be the final and ultimate technology. There is no need for any education; the three R's can be taught in the house.

But Haridas was a really talented young man. He revolted against Gandhi and he went to school, he went to college. His uncle supported him, and after university when he came back, Gandhi closed the door in his face and told him, "To me the day you went to school against my will you died."

Now what do you say? Is it violence or nonviolence? The very effort to impose your will on somebody else is violence. And the boy had not done anything wrong; he simply wanted to be educated. He had not committed a murder. But when he came back from the university with a degree, Gandhi behaved in such a way!

He told his wife, "I don't want to see the face of Haridas again. He should not be allowed to enter the compound of the house." And in his will he wrote... because in India when a person dies his eldest son gives fire to his funeral pyre. He had not forgotten it, and he was not a man to forgive. He had written in his will, "Haridas should not be allowed to put fire to my dead body" - even to his dead body.

Gandhi used to teach that all religions are one - Hinduism and Mohammedanism particularly, because the political problem in India was that Mohammedans were asking for a separate country.

And he wanted India to remain one simply so that it remains under the Hindus, because if the country is one, Hindus have the majority. The Mohammedans would always be second, they could never be in power. There was no possibility of their ever being in power. But he played the very cunning role of a saint - that all religions are one, and every morning and evening he was singing devotional songs with his disciples, Hindus, Mohammedans and Christians.

Haridas was really a man of guts. I know him personally. I love the man; I always love the people who have some rebellion in their blood, some disobedience in their very bones, some individuality in their marrow.

He had told me himself that just to see how deep this syntheses of religions was, he became a Mohammedan. Of course he changed his name. He asked the Mohammedan priest who was changing him, converting him into Mohammedanism, "Please keep my name exactly the same, just change it into Arabic." His name was Haridas; Haridas means servant of God. So he said, "Keep it exactly the same." His new name was Abdullah Gandhi. Abdullah is Arabic for Haridas; it simply means servant of God.

Mohammedans were very happy that Mahatma Gandhi's son had become a Mohammedan; that proved the superiority of Mohammedanism over Hinduism! They gave him the title of Maulana; it is equal to Mahatma, a great soul. So he became Maulana Abdullah Gandhi. And Gandhi was so furious that even his wife had to tell him, "This is below you. You say every religion is one, so it does not matter whether he has become Mohammedan or if he becomes Christian. To you it is all the same. This is the time to prove that what you say you mean."

But he was so angry he could not sleep the whole night, and he said, "If this boy had died at the very birth, I would have been happy." Do you think this is a nonviolent attitude? Even the desire that he would have died, is it not a subtle desire to kill him? It is violence.

I was talking about all this when I referred to there not being much difference between Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi is a hypocrite, Adolf Hitler is a straightforward violent man; otherwise, both are saints.

Adolf Hitler never smoked, he was vegetarian, he always went to bed early and got up early in the morning. What more do you want in a saint? I was simply condemning Mahatma Gandhi, not admiring Adolf Hitler. I was saying that these things became saintly in Mahatma Gandhi; that he was not smoking, that he was not taking tea, that he was going to bed early and getting up early in the morning. These things made him a saint, and the same things did not make Adolf Hitler a saint.

And both are, by their very nature, very violent.

It was just a different situation in which Gandhi had to use nonviolence as a political strategy. And there are immense proofs. Before India became free, an American journalist, Louis Fischer, asked Mahatma Gandhi, "What will happen to the armies when India becomes free?"

Gandhi said, "There will not be any army, no navy, no air force. All these people will go to the farms to work."

"And what about the arms?"

"They will be thrown into the ocean."

Freedom came but nothing happened. The army has remained and is growing bigger. India attacked Pakistan because Pakistan had taken certain land in Kashmir - and Gandhi blessed the three airplanes that were going to bomb Pakistan. Now this is the man who just a few years ago was saying all arms should be thrown into the ocean. Now he blesses... he came out of his house to bless the airplanes which were just about to fly, waiting for his blessing.

I don't see any difference... The only difference is that Adolf Hitler is straightforward, Gandhi is a hypocrite; otherwise both are saints.

Question 7:

I hate poverty.

I don't want anybody to be poor in the world.

The third world consists of poor nations, backward nations, and I want all those people who have been keeping these nations poor to be punished.

All religions are against birth control; that goes on increasing the population of the world. The pope goes on teaching that birth control is a sin, and so there will be more and more poor people. Now what do you want? - should I be responsible for it?

In my commune, in four years not a single baby was born. If people listen to me there will be no poverty. Still there is time; poverty can be completely stopped by absolute birth control for thirty years.

I am not in favor of going and serving the orphans. On the one hand you teach against birth control so orphans are created, and then you serve the orphans and get Nobel prizes. It is really good business. I simply don't want to have anything to do with this business. Poverty can be destroyed and should be destroyed. Anybody who prevents it from being destroyed is committing a criminal act and should be behind bars - in every nation.

The poor people need not be poor if we decide only one thing: that we are not going to have a third world war. Seventy-five percent of our finances and energies are going into a third world war, which is absolutely absurd because it will destroy everybody. Nobody is going to be a winner, nobody is going to be defeated. It is suicidal; it is not war. It has lost all meaning because you cannot win, you cannot defeat. A simple understanding that all this energy that you are wasting on nuclear weapons should move to poor countries...

Just a few days ago I saw that in the European Common Market they have so much surplus food that the problem is how to destroy it. Just the cost of destroying it is two billion dollars. It is not the cost of the food, it is the cost of drowning it in the ocean: loading it, unloading it, taking it into the ships, drowning it in the ocean. This is simply the cost... it is not the cost of the food, which will be a thousand times more. They are ready to destroy it. Every year, somewhere or other, food is being destroyed. And somewhere or other people are dying in thousands just because they don't have food, they don't have drinking water.

Just a little sanity... What is the need to destroy the food? If you are ready with two billion dollars to destroy it... perhaps it may take a little bit more to send it to Ethiopia and millions of people can be saved. But nobody is interested in anybody else; everybody is interested in money. The food has to be destroyed so values in the market don't go down. The only concern is that you can go on exploiting people... more money.

I am deeply concerned, but my concern is different from the concern of pope the Polack and Mother Teresa. Their concern is cunning; their concern is political. Their concern is to increase their numbers. If there are poor people, they can be changed, converted to the Catholic religion.

My concern is to destroy poverty completely, and just three steps can do it. One is absolute birth control for thirty years. The second is, because there is no possibility of a third world war - that would be absolutely ridiculous - stop preparing for it and divert the money to the poor people. And the third is that every country should make a law for euthanasia.

Just as birth control is needed on one end - we stop new people coming in - we can help old people who want to go out: they should not be prevented. Seventy-five years, eighty years can be the limit.

After that, if the person wants to live, we will allow him to live; but if he wants to drop his body, our hospitals will help him to die a beautiful death, silent, as if he is falling into a deep sleep.

Every hospital should have a death section where there should be a meditator who can teach meditation to the people who are dying. They should remain there for one month before death, so that they can learn meditation, they can learn relaxation; they can die peacefully, happily, meeting their friends, their children, their relatives and saying goodbye to them knowingly. And then, slipping slowly into sleep, into meditation, and passing away from the body into eternity....

If these three things are done, the world can be lived like a paradise.

Question 8:

Nothing makes me unhappy, and nothing makes me most happy. I am simply blissful, and blissfulness is something beyond happiness, unhappiness.

Happiness and unhappiness are of the mind. They are dependent on some cause - something makes you happy, something makes you unhappy, but it is always something else.

Blissfulness depends on nothing but your own inner being. You are centered in yourself, and that gives you such serenity, such joy, that all happiness, all unhappiness seem to be faraway echoes, meaningless.

Question 9:

I am surprised to have even a few disciples in France - but I will have more. Just let the French government allow me to enter and before they force me out I will have a few thousand.

Question 10:

That is absolutely nonsense.

I am against drugs.

I have to be against drugs for the simple reason that meditation cannot grow if you are taking drugs. Drugs make you unconscious, and meditation makes you conscious. They are opposite to each other. Drugs are needed by people who are miserable so that they can drown their misery in unconsciousness.

People who are meditating do not need drugs, because if they use drugs they will drown their blissfulness into unconsciousness and that will be absolutely irrational, unnatural. Who wants to forget blissfulness? Everybody wants to forget misery, suffering, anguish.

My whole teaching is meditation, and drugs are against it.

How can I support drugs? It is a contradiction.

Lies go on being spread against me by people who do not have any argument against what I am saying, against my way of life, against meditation. They have nothing to say. All that they can do is spread lies. Every day newspaper cuttings are brought to me which make me laugh... how can people go on inventing such things?

Just the other day there was a cutting saying that the American police are after me, and I am hiding from them because there are charges against me of manslaughter, sex orgies and drug abuse.

The American government has prevented me from entering America for five years. I am absolutely willing right now to enter America, but the government does not want me. And these newspapers are publishing that I am hiding....

Is this a way of hiding, talking every morning, every evening to news media from all over the world?

Is this a way of hiding? Have you seen anybody hiding in this room?

Question 11:

It is certainly a curse from God, but not due to licentiousness. It is a curse from God because of the teachings by the church of celibacy - which is unnatural; of keeping monks and nuns separate - which is unnatural, which is bound to create homosexuality.

Homosexuality is a religious disease, and the church is responsible for it. God himself is responsible for it, because in the Christian trinity, God is there, the father, the son Jesus Christ is there - and who is this guy the holy ghost? There is no woman there; it is a gay group! And I suspect this holy ghost is a boyfriend of God's.

Question 12:

I don't know about him... I have many things to say to him. I don't think he can manage to say anything to me. Most probably he will escape when I enter Italy.

While he was India I challenged him that I wanted a public debate, and like a coward he remained silent.

I will go to Italy!

He has already informed the Italian catholic news media that they should not publish anything about me - for or against, negative or positive. Now what can this man have to say to me? I have always thought that Polacks are a little retarded, but I have never thought that they are such cowards. But this man seems to be both.

I have certainly many things to say to him, because he is one of the greatest criminals in the world today, and I have to point out every crime that he is committing. So for posterity's sake it should be taken note of that there was somebody who has pointed out who is the cause, and who is the man creating all these troubles.

I have to ask this man many questions. I know perfectly well that he has no answer for anything because for twenty centuries none of the popes has been able to answer anything. Even Jesus Christ had no answer for anything... just making statements without any rational support, without any arguments.

Jews are not such hard people. I have come to know them very closely. I have been joking about them continually, but they have not even felt offended. I don't think they would have crucified Jesus if he had rationally supported his statements. His statements were just outrageous. "I am the only begotten son of God." Now what support of reason, evidence, has he got? Has he got any certificate?

And if Jews - who are not hard people, but very loving and soft - even if they had to crucify him, the reason must have been that he was becoming a pain in the neck. Just an uneducated guy talking nonsense... he neither gives any evidence nor remains silent. He must have been too much of a pain. Finally they decided it was better to get rid of him.

They got rid of him and since then they have been sorry because they lost the biggest business that their own boy created! Christianity is the biggest firm in the whole world; no business firm can compete with it. And their own boy did it, and they missed the chance.

I have to ask the pope many questions. And I would like him to gather courage and encounter me in the Vatican in front of all his cardinals and bishops and archbishops and priests and all his followers.

I want to ask these questions to him in front of his own people, so they can also see the emptiness of the representative of God who is infallible. But I don't think that he has anything to ask me. It is going to be a great event in the history of Christianity if he gathers courage and is able to receive me in the Vatican and answer my questions.

But I am suspicious. I don't think that this man is man enough. He is just hollow, nothing is solid in him. It is one thing to talk to the Christians, to the Catholics who believe in you, who cannot question you, who cannot doubt you; it is a totally different thing to talk with me. He will have to prove every single word that Christianity stands upon.

But right now he is showing his cowardice by preventing the news media from letting Italy know that I am coming to Italy. He is so afraid he is telling the news media not even to write negative articles against me, because even that will make people aware that I am here.

I have my own ways. All the news media are going to report about me; even the Catholic news media are going to report about me. They will have to, because I am going to hit everybody from God to the Polack pope as hard as possible, and I will remain in Italy until the whole country becomes aware of me. I will move to every city and talk to people directly. I may even choose to remain there forever.

Question 13:

I don't have children, but I love children. And I want it to be known that it is good to love children, but it is not good to have children.

Question 14:

No. There is no possibility of any nuclear war soon - or later.

The nuclear weapons themselves have stopped the possibility. The war is going to be so total, it has lost its meaning.

Question 15:

No. I don't support the death penalty for the simple reason that if somebody murders a man and you kill that man as a penalty... He has committed a crime, and now the society is committing the same crime as a penalty. By your penalty the man who has been murdered is not going to come alive. By your penalty, whereas there was only one man murdered now there are two men murdered. This is sheer nonsense. The person who has murdered...

You are not being fair; you are simply taking revenge. If you were fair, you would send the murderer to a psychiatric home to be taken care of. Something is wrong in his mind, something is wrong in his psychology for which he is not responsible. He can be treated.

Not only am I against the death penalty, I am against all kinds of punishment, because punishment does not change the person; in fact it makes him a harder criminal.

Every crime is basically something to do with psychology. The man's mind is not in the right shape; he needs care, he needs compassion. He needs the support of society so he can return into the society with dignity and respect.

Up to now we have been very murderous, we have been barbarous. Civilization has not happened yet. The death penalty and all kinds of punishment simply prove our barbarous approaches.

A civilized humanity will treat people who are criminals. They need to be sent to the hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, not to the jails.

Question 16:

A future where every individual is absolutely free from religion, from nation, from race, from color, where every individual is given equal opportunity to grow into whatsoever he wants. A future where no marriage exists, where love is the only law, children are taken care of by the community, and people can be together as long as they love. The moment they feel the breeze of love has passed, they can depart in friendship, in gratitude. A future where people will not be exploited by religion, by politics, where people will be allowed to be happy and rejoicing.

Misery should be thought to be unnatural, and blissfulness should be thought natural - where people will be singing and laughing and dancing.

I don't want anybody to hope for a paradise beyond death.

I want us to create paradise herenow, on this beautiful earth. This is the only place in this vast universe where life exists, where consciousness exists, and where a few people have been able to become Gautam Buddhas.

I would like everybody to reach to those heights of Gautam Buddha, of Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, so that all fear of death disappears and everybody knows that his inner being is part of eternity.