Logic is a prostitute

Question 1:

The proverb has great wisdom in it. The moment one comes to know the truth, he becomes both - a child on his part, a fool in the eyes of others. They are not two things.

A man who has seen the light starts behaving so innocently that he can only be called reborn.

But because of his innocence, because his purity is like a child's, he can be deceived, cheated, exploited; hence, in the eyes of others he looks like a fool. The fact is, he is the only one who is not the fool; everybody else is. But the fools are in the majority and the man of truth is alone.

Gautam Buddha became just like a child. Zarathustra became just like a child. When Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote a book about the man of truth, a man of silence and innocence, he named the book THE IDIOT. He will appear to be a fool: to be a child is the greatest risk in this insane world.

You are asking me where I fit. If there were two things I could have chosen... I am both. As far as I am concerned, and those who understand me are concerned, I am a child. As far as those who do not understand me and do not want to understand me, I am certainly a fool. I fit perfectly with the whole proverb. There is no question of choice.

Question 2:

Holland is my country. I have more loving friends in Holland than anywhere else, not only loving but in deep trust. They have remained with me from the very beginning - they don't know how to betray.

It is a great quality, a great honor, to remain in love, to remain in trust, and to go on seeing the truth and never start taking it for granted.

The Dutch people are beautiful. I have come in contact with so many Dutch sannyasins that it feels as if I have already been to Holland. Although I have not gone there yet... any day I could move to Holland.

And this is my trust - that although governments like that of Germany may try to prevent me from coming to their country, this is not going to happen in Holland. I will be received with love and welcomed; even the government is not going to create any barriers.

I have not yet applied for the tourist visa. I have left aside only one country, Holland, for the simple reason that it is my last hope.

Question 3:

I still say that the youth is the hope for the future. But your past generations have killed the very phenomenon of being young; they have destroyed the youth. They have lost the love and the trust of the youth, because they have deceived them so many times that it has become impossible for them to believe the older generations. What the older generations have done to young people, they have been doing for centuries. Now it has come to a climax.

They have repressed the youth as far as their love is concerned. They have not allowed them to choose their partners; they have been trying to arrange marriages for them - and every marriage is a failure. I have not come across a marriage which is not a failure. It may look a success from the outside, but you will have to know the inside story. It is ugly, nauseating. The younger person sees all this: what has happened to the father, what has happened to the mother, what is happening in the family, what is happening in the nation.

The youth are bound to have the clearest eyes - young eyes without any dust. They can see the phoniness of the politicians; they can see that their religious leaders don't know even the ABC of religion. And after the second world war they are in utter frustration, because after the second only the third world war can happen.

Once Albert Einstein was asked, "Can you say something about the third world war?"

He said, "No. I cannot say anything about the third world war, but I can say something about the fourth."

The questioner was surprised. He said, "This is strange: you cannot say anything about the third, and you are so confidently saying that you can say something about the fourth."

He said, "Yes, I can say with absolute confidence about the fourth that it is not going to happen, because the third will be the last; it will finish all life on the earth."

Whose life are you going to finish? The old generations are finished already; they are robots. They have never lived in freedom, in love; they have never known the search for truth.

The third world war, if it happens, is going to be the death of the youth who have not even known a few springs of life, who have not known anything about this beautiful earth. It is natural that they will be utterly frustrated with the whole world.

Out of that frustration, if the youth commit suicide they are slapping your faces, they are saying, "Before you commit the suicide of the whole world, at least we want to be individuals. We could not be individuals because of you - your religion, your politics, your vested interests in life. But at least give us freedom so that we can commit suicide and at least have one moment of individuality - our own decision. We are not going to die according to the decisions of Ronald Reagan."

Their suicides are significant; they are not ordinary suicides which people have committed down the ages. They are question marks on your society, your family, your religion, and the way you are running the world.

I have something to say to the youth: Don't be so pessimistic. Committing suicide is very easy; it is not a difficult task. And by committing suicide you are not going to prevent the global suicide that is coming on. When you are ready to commit suicide, risk your life, then why not risk your life in a rebellion against all old values? Destroy the church, destroy nations, destroy any discrimination between colors. Destroy the inequality between man and woman. Destroy poverty from the earth.

You have nothing to lose.

You were going to commit suicide, but before committing suicide at least do a few necessary things.

Perhaps the transformation that you bring about may prevent the world from being destroyed, and you may not need to commit suicide. You may live to love and celebrate the great gift of life that existence has given to you. Don't throw it away because others are behaving idiotically. For their fault, don't punish yourself. And when you have decided to commit suicide, then there is no problem, you can risk everything.

I need people who are ready to commit suicide because these are the only people who can become sannyasins. Sannyas is also a suicide - but not your suicide. It is the declaration that the society is dead and we don't want to live in a graveyard; we would like to create our own society and we would like to create our own life.

Don't be in a hurry. Life is so precious; don't throw it away like that. There is no need. You can see my people who are in the same situation - but rather than committing suicide they have decided to transform their lives in spite of the ugly society in which they are living. They have ignored the society. They have accepted the death of the society and the civilization and the religion. They are dead. Do you think any religion is alive?

The religion that blossomed with Gautam Buddha died with Gautam Buddha. The song that arose with Lao Tzu disappeared with the death of Lao Tzu. The dance of Meera died with Meera. This is the natural course of things.

All religions are organized around corpses. Don't worry about them; they don't have any power, they don't have any life. The politicians have died with the second world war. The second world war was a milestone in the history of man.

Now, either man chooses a global death or he chooses to give birth to a new man who will not need any politicians, any priests, who will not need any leaders - who will be sufficient unto himself.

Question 4:

It is going to happen in all the developed countries, not only in Holland, because machines are replacing men.

A machine is more efficient and can do the work of thousands of people. A machine is very reliable:

it never revolts, never goes on strike, does not make any unions; there is no fear that the machines will overthrow the government.

All the vested interests in the world are trying to exchange men for machines, computers and other sophisticated technologies. Naturally, if they are going to depend on robots, they are going to take away all the dignity of man. They will pay men... In fact the person who insists on employment will be paid less than the person who is ready and willing to be unemployed; the unemployed will be paid more.

But a man who has no work has lost something very significant - his creativity. Now, twenty-four hours a day he is empty; he lives like a ghost, a posthumous existence. Money he will have, but not the pride of being human. And if people are not working they are going to become lazier and lazier; they will become drunkards, they will become gamblers. They will have to do something; nature has not created you to be retired while you are young, to be retired even before you start work.

Many will commit suicide, many will commit murders just for excitement's sake. And finally, if these people have any guts they are going to destroy the computers, the technology, the machines which have taken their dignity, their whole soul. It is now a small fragment, but soon more and more people will be in the same position. I would like the governments of the world to know that machines may be more efficient, but they cannot take the place of man.

You can use machines where it is dangerous to a man's life to work - for example, deep in the mines, coal mines, gold mines and other mines. Use the machines to explore existence; use the machines to explore the underwater world; use the machines to go inside the earth to explore - use them as servants. But don't make them masters; otherwise, sooner or later even the people who are destroying the dignity of other human beings will also be thrown out.

A machine can be a better prime minister, a better president - machines don't commit mistakes.

And if a machine goes wrong, it can be repaired; you just have to send it to the workshop and the parts can be changed.

In America twenty percent of the presidents have been murdered - and twenty percent is not a small percentage. Why have twenty percent of the presidents been murdered? These were the most beautiful presidents, Abraham Lincoln, Kennedy...

President Truman, who destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki unnecessarily, who was the greatest killer in the history of humanity, was not murdered. Ronald Reagan is not going to be murdered.

The uglier the person is, the less is the possibility that he will be murdered. The people who were really nice, the people who really wanted to do something good for humanity, for the country were removed - they were going against the vested interests.

Machines will be very polite. If you remove them they will not resist; you will not need to shoot machines, murder machines. But what is the point? Even if machines are more efficient, for whom are they working? If they are destroying men these machines cannot be allowed... Every government has to be aware that man's dignity should not be destroyed. Machines should be used in places where it is dangerous for man to work, but not in places where man enjoys working, feels of some use to society. If you give him unemployment wages he starts feeling useless, a burden - how can he live this nightmare?

I can teach this man to use that time for great inner exploration - but I am being prevented from entering every country....

If you really want to use machines in place of man, then man has to be given some new adventures.

Just unemployment wages won't help; he has to be given meditations, he has to be prepared for an inner journey to explore himself. Perhaps that can be a great benediction.

But these people are afraid of meditation also, because meditation will make people more alert, more aware of their rights, of their birthrights. Meditation will make them more conscious that they are not machines and that machines are defeating them. They will not tolerate these machines; that's the fear.

Countries are making laws to prevent me from entering. I am not a terrorist. You can see the insanity of the world: the German government allowed all the terrorists of Europe - skinheads, punks and all kinds of idiots - to have a world conference in Germany. These people are making bombs, these people are creating terror everywhere, killing people. These people are allowed... I am not allowed into Germany.

You can see the mind: I am more dangerous to them than all these terrorists. And they are having a world conference...? No, they are not afraid of terrorists; they have enough armies for them, they have enough weapons for them. They are afraid of an unarmed man who simply teaches people to love, to be silent, to be blissful.

You can see that blissfulness is more dangerous to these people, silence is more dangerous to these people, meditativeness is more dangerous to these people. And the reason is that a man who becomes blissful, silent, meditative, centered, becomes an individual. He starts deciding on his own, is no more under any bondage, is no more a slave and will not tolerate any nonsense.

Machines are machines; they are man-made. They cannot replace man. A conscious humanity is needed; otherwise you are going to be thrown out of your jobs, away from your work, away from your friends. Yes, you will be given money - money to commit suicide, money to lose your dignity, money to remain twenty-four hours a day in an air-conditioned nightmare.... A conscious humanity cannot tolerate this.

The fault is of the governments. People should not be taken from their jobs. I know it for a fact that whenever a person gets retired he dies early - ten years earlier than he would have died. If he is sixty when he gets retired, then too he loses ten years of his life because he starts feeling futile, meaningless, of no use to anybody. Nobody takes note of him, nobody needs him....

Remember a fundamental law of life: People are nourished by being needed.

If there is nobody who needs you, your nourishment, your very inner nourishment is stopped. You may drag on a few days, but you start thinking of dying, that it will be a relief. You were a collector or a plumber or an electrician; you had a certain dignity, your work was appreciated - that was your nourishment. Now nobody even says good morning to you. You pass by and nobody takes any note that a human being is passing by. He is nobody; his profession was his definition.

I would like this whole stupid thing to be stopped. Machines should not replace man. If you cannot engage people in work, then more work should be found. Life needs so much; there is no scarcity of jobs. If you are ready to pay for unemployment, then why not create beautiful jobs: people making cities beautiful with fountains, with lakes, with trees, with flowers; create more jobs.

The people are not wrong if they start living a lazy and inhuman life on unemployment wages. The politicians, the people who are in power, will be responsible for crippling so many people.

You will be surprised to know that in India for thousands of years the most beautiful clothes were made by the people in what is now called Bangladesh. In Dacca was created such a thin material that you could cover a whole elephant and still pass that material through a small ring. The British government cut these people's hands off so they could not create such beautiful material. They wanted a third-class material that they were producing in Lancashire, in England, to be sold in India.

On a far bigger scale, the same is happening: you are not cutting the hands, you are destroying the very soul of man.

I am not against machines. There are many things which machines should do, and there are many new things which we should find for man to do. One of the greatest projects would be to make this earth as beautiful as possible. That would employ millions of people. Why waste money on unemployment wages? On the one hand you are destroying money; on the other hand you are destroying people.

It should be stopped, and stopped immediately. Otherwise, people should be free to destroy your machines. And it would not be an act of violence, because machines don't have any souls; you can destroy machines nonviolently. All computers should be destroyed so people can be restored to their dignity and their jobs.

Do machines exist for us or do we exist for machines?

Question 5:

The question is good because it says "so-called ordinary people." In fact, there are only so-called extraordinary people; ordinary people are just real people, not so-called. Extraordinary people are so-called; they are phony, unreal.

There is no problem in introducing meditation into people's lives - I will not call them ordinary because I don't see anybody who is extraordinary. The whole distinction is created by egoists.

Everybody is a unique individual; either everybody is ordinary or everybody is extraordinary, but there is no distinction between the two. I will just use the word 'people'.

Gautam Buddha was just like you before he became enlightened. I was just like you before I entered into my innermost core. There is no speciality in it. Only one thing is missing: you have never endeavored, you have never tried - you have been looking only outside.

Your education teaches you to look outside, your church teaches you to look outside towards a God, towards a HOLY BIBLE, holy KORAN, holy GEETA... Your politicians go on teaching you to look outward for a promising future. Nobody tells you that you have an inner world too; it is only a question of reminding you.

Have you sometimes seen a man looking for his glasses, and the glasses are sitting on his nose?

Somebody has to remind him, "What are you looking for?"

He says, "I am looking for my glasses."

And somebody has to say to him, "You cannot even look for glasses without glasses. They are sitting on your nose."

And the man feels and says, "My God, I completely forgot."

You have simply forgotten yourself.

Who is looking outside?

Without the inside there cannot be any outside.

Meditation is nothing but a remembrance of your inner being. The English word 'sin' is very significant - it was destroyed by the Christians completely. Its root meaning is forgetfulness; it has nothing to do with what your priests go on calling sin. It is simply forgetfulness - you have forgotten yourself.

You can sit silently and start remembering. Close your eyes, watch your thoughts, watch your emotions... and just watching them you will come to realize a new factor - the watcher. That realization is the beginning of an inner revolution: you are the watcher, not the watched. You are not the mind, not the body, but something hidden deep inside you - the watcher.

The watcher goes on watching every up and down in life. Now there is no need to get identified.

When you are down you need not be sad, because the watcher is only a watcher. When you are up you need not become egoistic; you are just the watcher. Slowly, slowly all turmoil around you starts settling. Your identification with things which you are not is the problem. Your disidentification is meditation. Disidentify with everything until only the pure watcher remains. Remain settled into the watcher, whatever you are doing, wherever you are going.

You will be a new man with a freshness, with a life which you had never known before, with something eternal in your eyes, something of the immortal existence in your every gesture. You will find tremendous strength, power to be yourself against the whole world.

Question 6:

You must also be a loving person. You must have clean eyes, an unprejudiced mind - that's why you can see my people and their love and their purity.

Everybody who comes here sees things which he is capable of, which he deserves. Where you can see love and its purity and cleanness, there are people who see sexual orgies happening here. I have never seen... I would love to see, but they never happen. I have been listening to the reports about sexual orgies and I have been asking Anando, "What sexual orgies?" She says she will try to find out.

Everybody comes with prejudices, colored glasses on their eyes. Then they see everything colored according to their glasses. Yes, a few people come just like you, unprejudiced, without any idea gathered from yellow journalism. You come just to see on your own, with your own eyes, without carrying any conclusions beforehand; that's why you can see the reality.

A prejudiced mind is almost mad - it has not the clarity, not the sensitivity.

I am reminded of a madman who thought he was dead. It was very difficult for his family: he would not go to sleep; he would be moving around and would not allow anybody else to sleep. They would say "Please go to sleep."

And he would say, "Have you ever heard of any dead man going to sleep?"

On each and every point it was a trouble. They tried to convince him that he was not dead, but he was so convinced they finally took him to a psychoanalyst and asked, "Help us. This poor guy thinks that he is dead."

And the madman laughed and said, "Can a dead man be psychoanalyzed? Why are you wasting your money?"

The psychoanalyst also felt a little embarrassed about how he was going to deal with it; it was such a new problem. Sigmund Freud did not mention it, neither did Jung nor Adler. This was an absolutely new problem. But he said, "I will try," and he tried to convince him.

Finally, seeing that there was no way he could be absolutely certain, the psychoanalyst took a needle and put the man in front of the mirror. He said, "Now I will do an experiment which will prove everything. I want to ask you one thing: have you ever heard that dead men don't bleed?"

He said, "That's true. When I was alive I heard that dead men don't bleed."

So he said, "Now give me your hand, and watch."

He pushed the needle into the man's hand and blood came out. The madman started laughing.

The psychoanalyst said, "What are you laughing for?"

He said, "I am laughing because for millions of years fools have believed that dead men don't bleed.

They do bleed! - it is proved. You have proved something of great importance. I appreciate your genius."

At that point the psychoanalyst called the family of the man and said, "Take him away, because he is starting to influence me. Last night I started wondering whether I am alive or dead. Who knows, perhaps that dead man is right and I am wrong - because he is so certain. I am not so certain. No argument can prove anything against his argument. I cannot stand so much argumentation when somebody comes to prove that he is not alive. Just take him away. I have my wife, I have my children, and if this thing also becomes my idea - that I am dead - they will all starve."

When somebody comes with a conclusion, then he looks through that conclusion and chooses only things which support his position.

Logic is a prostitute.

It can help anybody - for or against, it has no problem.

I know my people, I know their love, I know their purity, I know their silence. And when two sannyasins have met after years and they are hugging each other, journalists rush to photograph them. Now you cannot photograph purity, you cannot photograph love... and they will print those photographs to prove: "Look what is happening!"

You are fortunate that you have come with a clean and clear mind. I hope that those who come here with clear eyes show fairness. I don't want them to say something which they don't feel; I simply want them first to feel, and then to decide - not to decide before experiencing it.

Question 7:

I would love to. But the debate has to be really direct, and you have to choose people who are capable of debating. Ask the archbishop there, ask your prime minister there, because they are the people I am speaking against continually and it would be good to have an encounter face to face.

But don't bring pygmies to me. I am a simple man; I simply call a spade a fucking spade.