A new world a new man

Question 1:

It makes no difference whether you call it the end of the world or the end of time or the end of days; it is simply three ways of saying the same thing, the end of the world.

Don't try to deceive yourself just by different phrases. If there is no time, how can the world exist? If there are no days, how can the world exist? The end of the world is terrifying - but the answer cannot be found in the old scriptures because in the old scriptures there is no answer for the contemporary man.

The old scriptures are all rotten. They had answers for their own contemporaries - but some are twenty centuries old, some are thirty centuries old, some are fifty centuries old; they don't have any answer for you.

You have to find the answer within yourself.

The world can be saved not by changing phrases, but by changing man. And it is worth understanding this most important thing: man can change only when he is faced with ultimate death; otherwise he goes on postponing change. Change is troublesome. You are fixed with your own habits, you are accustomed to your old mind, your old ideas, your old prejudices. Change means you will have to go through almost a death of the old so the new can be born in you.

As far as I am concerned, it is good news that the end of the world is very close, because only then can man be persuaded to transform himself totally. Certainly this world will have to die. This world has come to its end, but we can create another world.

This man has lived enough, but we can give birth to a new man. All the old concepts, ideologies, religions, philosophies, have become absolutely empty. They no longer give any nutrition, any nourishment to human growth; on the contrary they all hinder. If you go on listening to them and if you go on searching for answers in the old scriptures, then the world is going to end and you are going to end. There will be no new man, no new world.

Forget the old.

I am reminded of a beautiful parable in Jesus' life... One morning, a beautiful morning on Lake Galilee, he came and put his hand on one of the men who was trying to catch fish. The man turned round, and there was something in the eyes of Jesus: whatever Jesus said the man followed it.

Jesus said, "Drop that net. How long are you going to destroy your life just by catching fish? Come with me. I will tell you the way to catch men."

He had never thought that he could be anything else than a fisherman. This man was so authoritative that he dropped the net and followed Jesus. Just as they were going out of the town a man came running and said to the man, "Where are you going? Your father who was ill for so many days has died. Come home."

He asked Jesus, "Give me three days so I can go and bury my dead father and do all the rituals that are needed. I will be back soon."

What Jesus said to that man I would like to say to you. Jesus said, "There are enough dead people in the town, you need not worry. Let the dead bury the dead. You come with me."

Those words are tremendously significant: "Let the dead bury the dead." The whole town is full of dead people. Although they are breathing and walking and talking and doing all kinds of things, they are not alive. There is no song in them, their heart has no dance in it, there is no ecstasy in their lives. Whether they are alive or dead does not matter; it is just the same. In fact, death will be better, it will be a great rest for them.

The world you are asking about is already dead. You cannot save it, no savior can save it - and there is no need to save it either. It is rotten. There are only corpses all around. They have forgotten to live, they have forgotten to love, they have forgotten to celebrate. They have forgotten everything that gives meaning to life, makes each moment a souvenir, a memory so golden to be kept alive forever. Their lives are just empty; inside they are hollow, there is nothing substantial in them. They don't have a soul.

It is perfectly good that this world dies, this man dies, this society dies. But before it dies and before we take it to the graveyard, we have to bring out of it a new life, a new man, a new world - exactly in the same way as when a seed dies into the earth it sprouts into a new life, with two beautiful leaves, green, fresh. This is transformation. The seed was closed and almost dead, but it has died into the soil and has given place to a living thing. A beautiful tree will grow with many branches, great foliage, fruits, flowers. And those branches will dance in the sun, in the wind, under the stars, under the moon.

Before it dies, let us use this world as a seed for the new man; let us use this man as a seed for a new humanity. That's my whole work - to prepare you for two things: to die as far as the past is concerned; and to start living in a totally new way, discontinuous with the past, so you can become the new man. It is absolutely urgent. You cannot postpone it.

The time is running short - because the old world has prepared for its own suicide. The nuclear weapons, a third world war... it has prepared everything for its own suicide. It has not taken any chances: just now on the earth there are so many nuclear weapons that we can kill seven hundred earths of this size, seven hundred human civilizations of this size. We are not taking any chance; the whole society has prepared its grave already.

Before it commits suicide, we have to save the essential life principle. And that can be done by each individual without being dependent on any organization; that is the old way. Without being dependent on any church - that is again of the past... For the first time the individual has to take all the responsibility for his life in his own hands. No God, no savior, no church is going to help; they are all part of the old structure which is going to die. They are all woven together so closely that you cannot save anything from them; they will all die together.

But each individual can free himself.

Just when I came to your beautiful island I was informed that Kazantzakis, one of the greatest artists of the contemporary world, was expelled, excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox church. The reason for his expulsion was the creation of Zorba the Buddha. He named it ZORBA THE GREEK.

Unconsciously he was creating the base of a new man; I call that new man Zorba the Buddha.

It cannot be Greek, it cannot be Italian, it cannot be German, it cannot be Hindu, it cannot be Mohammedan....

The same was the situation with me. I was also born into a religion - perhaps the oldest religion in the world, Jainism. It is older than Hinduism, because the Hindus' oldest book, RIGVEDA, mentions the first Jaina tirthankara, the founder of Jainism. That means Jainism was already in existence when RIGVEDA was written.

And about RIGVEDA there are problems. Contemporary scholarship thinks it must be at least five thousand years old; but one very great scholar of ancient scriptures, Lokmanya Tilak has decided RIGVEDA is ninety thousand years old. And his argument is such that there is no way to destroy it; his argument is very factual.

In RIGVEDA there is a description of a certain configuration of stars that happened ninety thousand years ago, and about which astronomers are scientifically agreed that it has happened only once.

That kind of constellation only happened ninety thousand years ago, and RIGVEDA describes the constellations so minutely, in such detail that it is impossible that the people who were writing it were not aware of it. It could not be fiction, they could not create it out of their minds. If RIGVEDA is ninety thousand years old, then Jainism must be perhaps one hundred thousand years old.

I was born into a Jaina family, and what happened to Kazantzakis was going to happen to me - but I am a different kind of man. The supreme command of the Jaina religion was going to decide about my expulsion from the Jaina religion. I wrote them a letter saying, "You don't have to make any trouble. I expel you all; now you cannot expel me. I do not belong to your gang, I am finished with it." They could not expel me because I expelled them all.

It is up to every individual not to be part of any dead, rotten ideology. Try to find out within yourself whatsoever is old, dead, and drop out of it. Throw it away. Clean yourself completely and be again a child. Be again innocent, with no ideas, no prejudices, no conditionings.

You have already been born; a new man has come into being, and it has to go from individual to individual. The fire can take almost like a wildfire, and if millions of individuals drop out of all old heritages, there is no need for life to disappear from this beautiful earth.

But we have to create a new life based on totally different principles. The old life was based, very strangely, on antilife principles. It was against everything that is living in you; it was against your love, it was against your sex, it was against your joy, it was against your pleasure. It was against everything that you enjoyed. It wanted you to be a dead saint, not a living human being. Antilife principles have ruled for thousands of years.

The ultimate result of it is that we are coming close to the end of the world. Your religions have contributed to it, your saints have contributed to it, your so-called philosophers have contributed to it... because they were all antilife. Anybody like Zorba who was for life was not allowed by the society to exist. He was condemned, he was discredited; in every way his dignity was taken away. He was reduced into an animal. Naturally, the crowd was powerful and managed to repress all rebellious individuals and forced them to follow the crowd.

I want the society to disappear. I want the crowd to have no power anymore. Each individual has a birthright to be free, to choose his life pattern and to move according to his nature, respectfully, with dignity. That is going to be the new way of life, where each individual is respected in his uniqueness, and there are no ready-made ideas that everybody has to fulfill in his life.

Everybody has to live according to his own heart, has to move according to his own inner being, wherever it leads. That is your destiny. Nobody else is going to decide it; you are the only one to decide for yourself. This decisiveness - freed from all crowds, mobs, organizations - will create a new earth and a new jubilant, celebrant life for each individual. There will be no need for anybody to think of paradise after death; paradise will be herenow.

It is good that the old world is coming to an end. Now you have to decide whether you want to die with the old world or to take a quantum leap out of the old, and create a new world and a new man.

Question 2:

In the first place, all the prophets have been false - Jesus included.

The very idea of somebody claiming that he is a prophet is nothing but pure ego. But people are not satisfied even with that. The ego is never satisfied, it wants more and more. Then they start trying to prove that they are the right kind of prophet. But to prove themselves the right kind of prophets they have to invent the wrong kind, and everything that is ugly, that is bad, can be thrown on the shoulders of the wrong prophets.

No prophecy of Jesus has come true. He was saying to his disciples, "Soon you will see me with the father in heaven." Two thousand years have passed and his "soon" seems to be really very long. One can stretch things a little bit but not that much. There is a limit to everything. Then he prophesied that he would be coming back, and if this is the end of the world, as it seems from every direction...

By the end of this century perhaps life will have to disappear from this planet, unless man takes a tremendously revolutionary step to change everything old, makes a bonfire of everything old, and starts life from scratch so that man becomes Adam and woman becomes Eve again. This time there will be no God to prevent you from eating the fruit of knowledge and the fruit of eternal life. Now you can explore every nook and corner of existence and become as wise as possible; you can explore your inner being and can get in touch with the eternal principle of life.

But from all directions it seems that the old world has come to an end - at the most a dozen years more. When is Jesus to come? - when the world is dead? Then will he come to perform the ceremonies for the dead?

He was hoping that at his crucifixion a miracle would happen, because he believed fanatically that he was the only begotten son of God. There was no proof of it, no evidence, no certificate. In fact, he forced the Jews to crucify him, because he was saying... In the old scriptures it is said that when the messiah comes he will be crucified and God will prevent the crucifixion and will do great miracles to prove that he is his own son. Jesus didn't listen to people and he went on saying it.

Finally they had to put him to the test. He was himself asking for it because he was saying it is because of the old scriptures that you should accept him as the awaited messiah. They crucified him and they waited for the miracle - but no miracle happened. Jesus also waited, but when he saw that he was already crucified on the cross and nothing was happening, he shouted at the sky, "Father, have you forsaken me?" Certainly a doubt had arisen, a suspicion that God had forsaken him.

But do you see the fanatic mind? He still thinks he is the prophet and he is the only begotten son.

God has forsaken him; he is complaining against God, not against his own idea that has been proved wrong. That's how the fanatic mind functions. You cannot prove a fanatic wrong; everything proves him right. Even the failure of any miracle from God's side does not prove him wrong; it only gives him a new idea - that God has forsaken him. But he remains the only begotten son, he remains the awaited messiah; he does not change his idea.

And whatever he has been saying about false messiahs coming from the East... why should they come from the East? In fact, when he was born the story is that three men of wisdom had to come from the East because nobody could recognize him in the West. So three men from the East traveled thousands of miles to reach the place where he was born, and they blessed him. They were happy that they had seen him; they may not be able to live long enough to see this boy's whole life and what he was going to do, but they had seen his birth and they were happy.

Now this is a great compliment to the East that Jesus is paying: only the East recognized him. Three wise men came from the East to pay tribute, bring presents for him, and the West had no recognition for him. Still he prophesies that in the dark days of humanity, false messiahs will come from the East.

Strange! The East has never believed in any messiahs.

You will be surprised to know that the idea of messiahs is Western. In the East the very idea of messiahs has never existed. There have been people like Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu, pinnacles of wisdom, but they don't proclaim themselves messiahs, prophets. They simply say what they are: they are human beings who have realized their innermost potential, and that you can do it just as they have done it. The idea of messiahs is Western.

You will be surprised to know that all these three religions - Taoism, Buddhism, Jainism - don't even believe in God. They are godless religions, so there is no question of any messiah, any messenger from God, any begotten son of God; there is no question of any such possibility. Why from the East?

This idea of East and West, of man and woman, of black and white - the very idea of dividing humanity is ugly. The whole humanity is one. How long are we going to behave like children?

Yuri Gagarin was the first Russian who went close to the moon. When he came back the first question asked to him was, "What was your first idea when you looked at the earth from that faraway distance?"

And he said, "Strange... I was myself surprised with the idea. I said, 'Ah, my beautiful earth.' I could not think of Russia, I could not think of America; I could not think of countries. From that distance the whole earth was one. I could simply say, 'My beautiful earth. my earth.'"

Anybody who has been trying to divide humanity and the earth is not in favor of the new man. So I don't agree with Jesus. In the first place, his fanatic idea that he is a prophet, the awaited messiah, is false. Nobody is a prophet and nobody is an awaited messiah.

And what he is doing is very strange. Jews are calling him a false prophet, and he is calling other prophets false. Can you see the whole thing? It seems to be like a marketplace where every shopkeeper is shouting that only his goods are the best, everybody else's are false.

His own people never accepted him as a prophet, as a messiah. Jews are still waiting for their awaited messiah; they have not taken any note of Jesus, they have not even referred to him in their books - not even about the crucifixion, not even that he ever existed. And he is calling other prophets, false prophets...

I say to you all prophets are wrong, all messiahs are wrong; and the people who wait for messiahs are sick. Because they cannot manage their own life, they are waiting for somebody else to come and manage their life. Why should anybody manage your life? You should wash your own dirty linen. Should messiahs do it? So you go on piling up all your dirty linen and everybody is piling it up waiting for the messiah - as if a messiah is a dry cleaner.

And as for Ayatollah Khomeini, he is simply a madman. To call him a false messiah - even false is to give him too much credit. I am the last one to give him any credit. He is simply inhuman and absolutely mad. He should be in a mad asylum. He is not even a false messiah... he is not even a human being.

Nobody is coming from the East to destroy you. The East is too poor to destroy you. The East is destroying itself by its own reproduction; you are preparing your own graveyard with your nuclear weapons. The Eastern method of committing suicide is a little out of date: just go on producing children, and sooner or later they will have to starve and die. Western technology and science have given you better methods to commit suicide - more technical, ultramodern nuclear weapons. Now no messiah is needed to do anything. The East will do its own thing by its great reproductive power; you will do it by yourself by your great intelligence, technology, science. No false messiahs are needed.

All you need is a few human beings who have clarity of perception, who can explain to you that there is still time. We can get out of the old structures and can begin the world anew, fresh. And it is such an adventure that nobody should miss it. It just needs a few courageous people to start it - and my sannyasins have started it. First they will be condemned, first they will be rejected; but soon they will be followed. That's how stupid human behavior has always been.

You just have to live joyously with the newly attained freedom that sannyas has given to you, and sooner or later people are bound to recognize it. How long can they ignore you? You are enjoying and they are unnecessarily miserable; the difference is so clear that even the retarded ones will be able to see it.

As the century comes closer to its end, you will find great crowds moving towards you. You will become their hope; your new lifestyle will be their only possibility to survive.

And nobody wants to die, nobody wants all life to be destroyed from the earth. But if everybody is miserable and everybody is feeling useless, then people may even reluctantly decide that it is better to be finished: why go on dragging unnecessarily? But if they can see that there is a section, however small, who are living differently in the same world, on the same earth - they don't have much but whatever they have, they enjoy much. They don't have much but they sing, they dance, they rejoice, they are alive. They have a warmth and they radiate love; their eyes are full of silence, serenity, and a tremendous depth. People are going to be moving towards you.

No messiah is needed.

But you can save the world. And the world has to be saved because a few idiots cannot be allowed to destroy it. It has taken thousands and thousands of years to bring life to such peaks, and a few idiots simply want to destroy it.

No false messiah is coming.

No true messiah is coming.

There has never been one before. But each individual can save himself, can be his own savior.

Be your own savior.

Spread the message that everyone has to be his own savior - there is no other way. And life will go on flourishing on a far more beautiful plane, in a far more juicy existence.

Question 3:

Just sit under a tree.

Gautam Buddha was sitting under a tree because he had renounced his kingdom. Would you allow him to sit somewhere or not? And in a hot country one naturally sits under a tree... it was just accidental, it was nothing special.

I was sitting under a tree because in my house there was no possibility of sitting silently, even for five minutes. It was a big joint family - sixty people in a small house - and it was always a public meeting. Everybody was interested in everybody else's affairs, and poked his nose into everybody else's affairs - and particularly with me as a target for everyone, because I was not doing anything as far as the family was concerned. Even if they wanted some vegetable to be fetched from the market... I would go in the morning and would come back in the night. My mother would be beating her head and she would say, "Do you understand that guests were to come and we sent you for vegetables? Where are the vegetables?"

I said, "The trouble with me is the moment I leave the house I get into arguments with anybody I meet. By the time I am finished with people I have completely forgotten for what I had come out.

Just now one friend invited me to eat with him in his house. I went there and only when I was eating vegetables I remembered: My God! I was supposed to purchase vegetables and go home."

But it was night. I went to the vegetable market but it was closed. In the night in India nobody purchases vegetables. So I said, "I am simply sorry." They would send me to purchase something, some small thing, and I would come back two or three times, saying, "Just please remind me what you wanted."

And they would say, "It is better you drop the idea. We will send somebody else, because it is just a habit to send you somewhere. We can understand that you go on forgetting because you are fighting and arguing with everybody, and it takes hours for you; you must have forgotten. We can understand - but you should understand our trouble. We are waiting for you and you come back here asking, 'What have you asked to be brought?'"

Finally they got the idea that this boy was absolutely good for nothing - but still they would not let me sit down silently. Everybody who would be passing would say, "So again back to your laziness that you call meditation. You are a great crook." My uncles used to tell me, "Just to avoid work you have found this meditation."

So naturally I had to sit under a tree in a public park. It was just out of sheer necessity; trees have nothing to do with it. You seem to be unnecessarily connecting things - that the lives of families are called the family tree. It is just a way of saying it. You are even saying that Jesus was crucified on a tree. No, to be crucified on a cross made of wood is not a tree. You seem to be a great researcher, and after all this research, you should be sitting under a tree rather than asking me questions.

Just sit under a tree and find out. Nothing will happen to you. The question is not where you are sitting; the question is whether you are going inwards. You can sit inside the house, you can sit under a tree, you can sit on the lawn, you can sit by the sea: the question is whether you are going in.

Where you are sitting makes no difference, even whether you are sitting - that too does not make any difference, because Mahavira became enlightened when he was standing. Just different types of people... He loved standing; he meditated standing. My feeling is that sitting, he must have been going into sleep, dozing, so he found a way to avoid dozing and sleep - standing. Standing you cannot doze off into sleep so easily.

In yoga people have even discovered standing on the head; in that position one thing is certain: you cannot fall asleep. Nothing more may happen, but you cannot fall asleep, because so much blood is rushing towards the head that it will not allow you to sleep. That's why you need pillows when you go to sleep - so blood does not go to the head. Your head is higher than the body so the blood reaches there less. But it is impossible for anybody to sleep standing on the head.

Your situation - whether you are sitting, standing or standing on your head - does not matter. Only thing is significant: that you should be becoming more and more silent, peaceful... a watcher of your thoughts... just a watcher, so that slowly your thoughts stop.

That is the beauty of watching. As your watching becomes strengthened, your thinking disappears.

And the moment there is no thought to watch you are in a magic world, a world where the greatest miracle happens. Because when there is nothing to watch, your consciousness - which was involved in watching - turns back. The circle is complete. It went from you, it was engaged in watching, but now that there is nothing to watch, it comes back. For the first time you become conscious of your own consciousness. That is enlightenment. It has nothing to do with any tree.

QUESTIONS FROM CLEO MAGAZINE, ITALY.

Question 4:

You go totally... and the teenager can go more totally than anybody else. He is becoming sexually ripe, or has become ripe, and he has more sexual potential than anybody else, more than he will ever have again in his life. These are the most precious moments. Do not waste them in reading geography, in reading histories about all kinds of idiots - Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible - all of no use.

Make love to a girl. Ask any older boy, ask your teachers, ask your father, ask your mother how to make love. There are manuals available; go to the library and find out. It is not a difficult job, just a little gymnastics...

In the beginning you will feel a little awkward about what you are doing. But soon you will become accustomed that this is the way the whole of humanity has been doing it for millions of years. This is the way you were born, so there is nothing to be embarrassed about.

This must be the beauty of your teachers, your educational system, your parents, your friends - to help you. The help can be possible in many ways. The teenager certainly needs help; perhaps man alone is the only animal in the whole world who needs sexual education. No animal needs it; instinctively they start doing things - they don't consult any expert. But with man there is difficulty; he has to learn it.

The difficulty has become greater because nobody talks about it, particularly in front of children.

Parents don't make love in front of children, which is ugly. That will be the right place for children to learn, to see how their parents make love. All children know that their parents are doing things behind their backs, and this discredits their respect, their honor towards the parents.

Parents should invite the children: "Sit down and watch because sooner or later you will have to do the same gymnastics we are doing. It is better to learn and then do them; otherwise you may go on a wrong track, into some perversion."

In the schools, in the colleges they are only thinking about how to introduce the subject, and even when a few schools and colleges introduce the subject, they make it almost theoretical. What about the practical? Each subject, they know, needs a practical period: Chemistry you cannot teach only theoretically, physics you cannot teach only theoretically - you have a practical period.

What about love? Why cannot teachers demonstrate? The whole college can see - just one lady teacher, one man teacher making love, and the whole college will know. It is such a simple exercise.

I don't see why things should be kept secret and unnecessarily made important. They should be simple.

Question 5:

All shyness is basically concerned with sex. Once children are perfectly free to have sexual relationships, you will see a tremendous change. They are no longer shy; they become, for the first time, decisive without any training for decisiveness, because a great biological burden has been removed from them, a great psychological tension has relaxed.

I don't see that there is any need to teach children how to be decisive. All that is needed is to give them freedom as far as love is concerned. And now that the pill is available, there is no fear of any girl getting pregnant; it is simple, a game, a playfulness. This will bring a certain strength in boys and girls which you cannot conceive was connected with their sexuality.

People are nervous about sex if they are repressed; if they have repressed sexuality they are hesitant about everything. They don't know what is right and what is wrong, what to do and what not to do, because about a very basic thing they are not allowed to make a decision which is fundamental because it concerns life itself.

My understanding is that once children are given freedom about sex, and sex is accepted as a very normal thing - that's what it is - they will come out with great decisiveness about other things, because for the first time they will not be repressed. It is repression which creates all kinds of troubles, shyness, indecisiveness... because deep inside they are continuously fighting with their own nature.

When there is no inner fight and no inner split - they are one solid individual - you will see a totally new kind of child in front of you, with a strength, decisiveness, with no shyness.

So this question can be solved if the first question is solved without any trouble.

Question 6:

First, the teenagers should be honest and true, whatever the consequence. They should say to their parents whatever their feeling is - not arrogantly, but humbly. They should not hide anything from their parents. That is what is making the gap: parents are hiding many things from the children, children are hiding many things from the parents, and the gap becomes bigger and bigger.

One day I went to my father and I told him, "I want to start smoking cigarettes."

He said, "What?"

I said, "You have to give me money for it because I don't want to steal. If you don't give me I will steal, but the responsibility will be yours. If you don't allow me to smoke, I will smoke but I will smoke in hiding. And you will be making me a thief; you will be making me hide things and not be honest and open. I see so many people smoking cigarettes that I want to taste. I want the best cigarettes available, and I will smoke the first cigarette before you."

He said, "This is strange, but your argument is right. If I prevent it, you will steal. If I prevent it you will still smoke, so my preventing you will create more criminal things in you. It hurts me. I don't want you to start smoking."

I said, "That is not the question. The desire has arisen in me seeing people smoking. I want to check whether it is worth it. If it is worth it, then you will have to constantly supply me with cigarettes. If it is not worth it, then I am finished with it. But I don't want to do anything until you refuse; then the whole responsibility is yours, because I don't want to feel guilty."

He had to purchase the best cigarettes possible in the town - reluctantly. My uncles, my grandfather, were saying, "What are you doing? This is not done." They insisted...

But he said, "I know this is not done, but you don't know him as much as I know him. He will do exactly what he is saying, and I respect his truthfulness, his honesty. He has made his plan completely clear to me: 'Don't force me and don't prevent me, because that will make me feel guilty.'"

I smoked the cigarette, coughed, tears came to my eyes; I could not even finish one cigarette, and I dropped it. I told my father, "This is finished. You need not worry now. But I want you to understand that about anything I feel I will tell you so that there is no need to hide anything from you. And if I hide even from my father then who am I going to relate with? No, I don't want to create any gap between me and you."

And seeing that I dropped the cigarettes, tears came to his eyes. He said, "Everybody was against it, but your sincerity forced me to bring the cigarettes." Otherwise, in India perhaps no father has ever offered cigarettes to the son; it is unheard of. Fathers don't even smoke in front of their sons so that the very idea of smoking does not arise.

The teenagers are in a very difficult situation. They are changing; they are leaving childhood behind and they are becoming youngsters. Every day new dimensions of life are opening for them. They are in a transformation. They need immense help from the parents.

But right now the situation is that they don't meet the parents at all. They live in the same house but they don't talk with each other because they cannot understand each other's language, they cannot understand each other's viewpoints. They meet only when the boy or the girl needs money; otherwise there is no meeting. The gap goes on becoming bigger; they become as much strangers as one can imagine. This is really a calamity.

Teenagers should be encouraged to say everything to their parents without any fear. This is not only going to help the children, it is going to help the parents too.

Truth has a beauty of its own; honesty has a beauty of its own. When teenagers approach their parents with honesty, truth, sincerity, and just open their hearts, it triggers something in the parents to open their hearts also, because they are also burdened with many things which they want to say but cannot. The society prohibits, the religion prohibits, the tradition prohibits.

But if they see the teenagers being completely open and clean it will help them also to be open and clean. And the so-called, much-discussed generation gap can simply be dropped; it can evaporate on its own accord.

The most troublesome problem is about sex. The children should be able to say exactly what is going on in their minds; there is no need to hide anything, because whatsoever is going on in their minds is natural. They should ask the advice of the parents - What can be done? - they are in a troubled state, and they need help. And to whom can they go except their parents? The gap is simply arbitrary, it is not natural.

I never felt any gap between myself and my father, or even with my grandfather. I would simply say whatsoever I felt, and I told them, "You can say whatsoever you feel, but I don't want to hide anything and I don't want you to hide anything."

I was from my very childhood tremendously interested in books of all kinds on all subjects - nothing to do with the textbooks of the school and the college and the university. My family was not rich. It was a poor family, but I made it clear to them, "For books, even if you have to sell your ornaments please sell them. I need those books - and I hate to read secondhand books. I don't want to read any book from the library. I want to purchase it."

My father said, "This is a strange idea. Why can you not read from the public library?"

I said, "Every book is marked, underlined. That does not allow me freedom; that hinders me. For example, if I am reading a book and two lines are underlined with red ink, those two lines stand out dominantly, emphatically. Somebody else's idea becomes important on that page. He does not allow me to find my own idea on that page; he is forcing me.

"I don't want to read any book that is underlined. And there are notes also. A few idiots go on writing notes, their comments, on the pages of public library books. I don't want their comments, I want fresh books. And if you cannot manage it, you simply say to me, 'This much I can manage; more than that is difficult for us to manage.' I will do any service, I will work, anything. I will produce money and I will purchase the book."

But they said, "That looks bad to us, that while we are alive... and you are so young, and you should not be working just to get books. No, we will arrange it. Ornaments certainly are not so important."

I said, "You have to think twice about it. You should not feel that you have obliged me. And remember perfectly well that after I am educated at the university perhaps I may not be of any use to you financially. I may not be able to give you a single cent. I may not work at all."

They said, "That we understand from the very beginning."

And they gave me money, as much as I wanted, although it was difficult for them. But that brought a deep intimacy.

My grandfather was old but he was working, not retired. He said, "You need money. I can work, you need not work."

When I left the university, I had a library of one hundred and fifty thousand rare volumes from all over the world concerning all the philosophies, all the religions, all kinds of ideologies. I was obliged to my parents, but they never allowed me even to show my gratitude.

They said, "That's nothing; it was our love for you. And you are part of us; we wanted you to be as happy as possible. We have seen you happy with books and that was enough."

If any problem was there, I simply told it to them. And that's my suggestion: the teenagers should not hide anything from the parents, from the teachers... they should be absolutely sincere, and the gap will evaporate. And we need the gap to evaporate, because what kind of society is this? There is a gap between parents and children, there is a gap between husband and wife, there is a gap between teachers and the taught. There are only gaps and gaps all around.

Everybody is surrounded with all kinds of gaps as if all communication has broken down. This is not a society, this is not a commune - because there is no communication. Nobody can say the right thing, everybody is repressed. Everybody is suppressing his desires, and everybody is angry, and everybody is feeling lonely, frustrated. We have created an angry generation; we have created philosophies of meaninglessness.

And the whole reason for all this is that children have lost contact with the parents. Children can do a tremendous job, and they have the courage to do it. Perhaps parents may not be able to do it; they are much too conditioned. The teenagers are young and fresh; just teach them to be sincere with their parents.

I made a contract with my father. I told him, "I want to make a contract."

He said, "About what?"

I said, "The contract is that if I say the truth you have to reward me, not to punish me. Because if you punish me, then next time I will not say the truth."

And that's how it is happening all over world: truth is being punished, so then the person stops saying it. Then he starts lying because lying is rewarded.

So I said to him, "You can decide. If you want me to lie, I can lie... if that is what you are going to reward. But if you are ready to reward the truth, then I will say the truth - but you cannot punish me for it."

He said, "I accept the contract."

And the next day there was trouble because just next door there used to live a very old-fashioned brahmin scholar. He was a very fanatical worshiper of Rama, one of the incarnations of the Hindu God. He was such a fanatic that if you named Krishna, another incarnation of the Hindu God, to him - both are incarnations of the same God, but he was devoted to Rama - he became furious.

He was not ready even to listen to the name of Krishna, what to say of Christ or of Mohammed. It was impossible... Krishna is an incarnation of the same God. So it became a joy for the children whenever he was there, wherever he was, just to shout, "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna" - and he would forget all his work, what he was doing, and he would run after you. He would go almost insane.

The next day I said to him, "Hare Krishna" - and he came after me. Of course he was old so he could not run so fast, and we went around the town two or three times. He was huffing and puffing and perspiring, but he followed. He was left far behind and I reached home early. I told my father what had happened: "I have told that man 'Hare Krishna.' I don't think there is anything wrong in it.

He will be coming."

My father said, "This is difficult. That man is such a boring person; now for hours he will harass me.

You just go and hide somewhere in the house."

So I was on the terrace. The man said, "Your boy has almost killed me today. Perhaps he knows all the small streets of the town and I have been running after people my whole life, but I have never come across such small streets that he took me in. Round and round... and I am an old man."

My father said, "What is the problem? What has he done?"

The man was so much against Krishna he could not pronounce the words "Hare Krishna," or say that I have said "Hare Krishna." He said, "He has said something that upsets me."

My father said, "Unless I know what he has said, how can I enquire?"

He said, "That is impossible, I cannot repeat those words. Where is he? Just call him."

I was called, and the old man said, "Remember one thing: you are not supposed to repeat the same mistake that you have made."

But I said, "Hare Krishna is not a mistake. It is the name of the same God. You can worship Rama, nobody prevents you; but what makes you so angry about Krishna?"

He said, "I have not come here for a philosophical discussion." He told my father in front of me, "You have to punish this boy."

My father said, "That is difficult because he made a contract with me just yesterday that if he says the truth then I cannot punish him. If he says a lie, then I can punish him."

And he never punished me after that. I told him the truth every time I was doing anything that was going to come to his notice sooner or later. It is a simple method. If you cannot expose yourself to your own father and mother... in this whole world everybody is more of a stranger than them. Your father and mother are also strangers, but they are the closest strangers, the most intimate strangers.

Expose yourself to them so no gap exists. This will help them also to be sincere with you. This is something to be remembered: that sincerity, honesty, truth, trigger in the other person also the same qualities.

Question 7:

Nothing is wrong with it. They should be allowed to, because they are changing, everything in them is changing. Changing fashions is simply an expression of their inner change. It is perfectly healthy and right. They should be allowed and helped to change as many times as they want. Soon they will settle, once their inner changes have settled. By the time they are twenty-one things will start settling.

For the time being, if you don't allow them to change the outer expressions then their inner changes will create tensions and anguish in them. Let them change. It is natural. This is the time when so much is happening inside them - before they become mature, adult - that they need some kind of expression for it. We can help with better changes but we cannot prevent changes; we can only give them better alternatives.

For example, we can give them better clothes, every year new fashions in clothes which are not ugly.

Otherwise they will find their own way and become hippies and do all kinds of stupid things. They will not take showers, will not wash their teeth; they will do stupid things because they are, after all, children and new to the world.

We should give them changes. It is better to give them every six months better samples - better hair conditioners, better soaps, better toothpaste. Any change will help. Don't force them to cut their hair according to the way you would like, no; give them alternatives. Take them to the barber and show them all possible kinds of different, beautiful hairdos. Let them choose; don't condemn them.

If you condemn them, they will become punks; they will cut half their hair, keep the other half, and paint that half in different colors. What can the poor children do? Give them some better alternatives - better musicians, better dancers; otherwise they will become followers of the Beatles.

All these fashions and different things are not going to help them as much as if the parents were interested and helping them. They could have given them higher classical music, paintings to do, music to play, dances to dance; it is their duty. Otherwise, anybody, most of whom are almost insane people...

You were asking about one pop singer, Madonna. She is a beautiful woman but just look at her clothes and all the kinds of junk that she has hanging around. I would like some day to see her.

She is beautiful. She may have talents for great music, great dance, but she will be gone just like the Beatles and others have come and gone. Teenagers take everything as a fashion. You cannot depend on them; they are not serious, they are simply experimenting.

A vast life has become available to them and they are experimenting. It is the duty of the parents and the teachers and the educational institutes to give them beautiful alternatives, to give changes which can help their growth, their maturity.

You know perfectly well that now it is very difficult to find any hippie. Have you seen any hippie of the age of forty? Do you think everybody dies nearabout thirty? No. Those poor people, after the age of thirty, realize that they have wasted their time. They did not get any education, they dropped out of school because that was in fashion. They lived in dirtiness, ugliness, drugs, and the moment they realize it - that they have been stupid - they come back into life.

But those ten years are lost forever. And back in life they will not have the same respectable jobs, the same creative facilities, because they are not skilled, they are not educated. They don't know any craft and they have not done anything so in life they will suffer till their death.

Who is responsible for it? I don't think they are responsible, because they were too young, and responsibility cannot be put on their shoulders. We are responsible. We could have given them better chances. Perhaps those ten years they could have been meditating rather than wandering like a hippie from Kabul to Kathmandu, from Kathmandu to Goa. And after Goa there is nowhere to go... the whole journey is finished.

They could have been given chances to understand different schools of meditation - Sufism, Hassidism, Zen, Yoga. They simply needed something new, something exciting. You could have sent them to the East to learn Zen painting, Japanese flute or Arabic flute or Indian flute - there are so many different instruments in the world. Soon they would have realized that it is time to go back into the world and work your way. But they would have come with respect, with some craft, with some creativity.

Question 8:

It is just because they don't belong to the family any more, and they are too young and too afraid to be alone in the world.

If there was not this gap between them and their parents, there would have been no need of any such groups. You can see in the East, you don't see this kind of thing happening - hippies or punks or skinheads. You don't see such a thing happening at all for the simple reason that children belong to the family. They have roots in the family, they are not alone; there is not such a gap as exists in the West.

This gap in the West is creating the whole problem. Then they want to belong to any group because they feel afraid to be alone. They are too young, too vulnerable, so they start belonging to any group that is available in the vicinity. And anybody can exploit them. They can be forced to do crime - they are doing crime - they can be forced into drugs, selling drugs, and they are doing it. And some cunning people can manage those groups and exploit the young people, all for their need to belong.

For that also, first, the gap should be dropped.

Secondly, you should create some other groups. In the whole of history there have been many.

For example, there were people who belonged to Socrates' school, young people in search of truth.

Everybody in Athens who had some intelligence moved into Socrates' influence. And he was not alone: all over the East there were many sophists whose whole work was to teach people how to argue. Thousands of young people belonged to those sophist schools just to learn argument, very refined argument.

In India we had many schools - different philosophers proposing different philosophies - and young people were interested. Old people had already settled down; the young people were the moving generations. Nobody was preventing them; they could go to any teacher. They could change their teachers, they could learn so much, and from original thinkers - not like the dull and dead universities of today where you find only professors who are just parrots, nothing of the original.

Each original thinker was a university in himself, and thousands of disciples around him were learning about everything in life from a certain angle - and not only learning it but living it, experiencing it before they settled into life. So rather than becoming skinheads they were with Nagarjuna, or with Basho, or with Chuang Tzu, or with Pythagoras, or with Heraclitus, or with Epicurus. And that was something beautiful.

Today we don't give them any alternative. It is our fault. And if there are people like me then the whole society is against them; they are not against the skinheads. In Germany they just had a world conference of skinheads, punks, all kinds of terrorists, an international conference - and they allowed the conference. These people are violent; they have been killing people, they have been bombing houses, they have been hijacking planes - and Germany allows them a conference! And for me, they make a law that I cannot enter into Germany.

Young people have come to me, and a great family has arisen around the world. There is a certain belonging, very loose so nobody is in a slavery; everybody is free and yet he feels some kind of synchronicity with thousands of people.

I can change all those terrorists, all those skinheads into sannyasins without any difficulty. I have changed many hippies; now you cannot recognize them. Even they may have forgotten that the first time when they came to me... Just going from Kathmandu to Goa - Poona was just in between, by the way - they had stopped to see what was happening there, what was cooking there. And then they thought, "This guy seems to be far out" - and they stayed forever. They forgot about Goa, they forgot about their hippie ideology; and when they became sannyasins they became totally new persons with new values.

We need more wandering philosophers around the world, wandering teachers around the world so that young people can belong to them and learn something - and live something.

Question 9:

They need not be. There is a time for fantasy, dreams, and it is good for teenagers to have fantasies and dreams rather than making them realistic. That means you are destroying their youthfulness and you are making them adult before their time.

No, those dreams and fantasies are part of growth; they will disappear by themselves. Life itself will make them realistic; before they enter life, let them enjoy their dreams - because in life there are only nightmares, only miseries and sufferings. They will become very realistic, but they will always remember those days of dreams and fantasies as the most beautiful. What can your reality provide in place of dreams and fantasies?

Unless you are ready for teenagers to move into meditations... that will not make them realistic, that will make them utopians. That will make them far more difficult to be adjusted in your rotten society than the dreams and the fantasies.

These dreams and fantasies can do no harm. They are part of life; that's how youth has always dreamt, fantasized. Let them dream and fantasize, they are not harming you. And soon they will be burdened with duties, jobs, children, wives. Before that they have a little time; let them use it in fantasy, there is no harm.

As far as I am concerned, my feeling is that their experience of this dream time will help them to remember that life can be different; it need not be miserable, it need not be a suffering. It is not necessarily a misery. They have lived beautifully - and those were only dreams. There is a possibility to have a conscious transformation in which you can have far more beautiful experiences than any dreams can give you. But the taste of dreams is good; it will keep you alert that misery is not all. Something else is possible.

Youth is the time for dreams and hopes, and when you are lost into the so-called real world those moments will remind you, "Is there some way to really find a state of being, of peace, serenity, silence and joy?"

So I don't think there is any need to change it.

Question 10:

These teenagers seem to be difficult - and it is certain no teenager is asking these questions! All these questions are fictitious. What is the problem in it? Teenagers are bound to be indecisive; why are you after them to become older than they are? Why do you want to cut their youth period?

Every society tries somehow to destroy their youth and make them older before they are really old.

I am not interested in making anybody older than he is. Teenagers will have this problem because they are teenagers; they have never lived life. For the first time they are entering life and they will have to think what is right and what is wrong. And it is better not to give them guidance, because your guidance will keep them retarded.

If every time you tell them, "This is right, do it!" and they never commit any mistake, they will never learn anything. Let them commit mistakes and let them learn through their mistakes. The only real learning is through mistakes, and decisiveness only comes after - when you have faltered many times, fallen many times, risen up many times. Slowly, slowly a maturity comes to you.

It is just like a young tree: in the wind it will sway, and you start asking me how the young tree should not sway in the wind - "Give me some guidelines." No, the young tree needs to sway in the wind because that gives it the joy of dance, and it gives it a certainty that even great winds cannot destroy it, uproot it. Every time it faces winds, its roots are becoming stronger; every encounter is a strengthening. Slowly, slowly it will become bigger, and then no winds will be swaying it; then you can sit under the tree and become enlightened.

Question 11:

It is a great relief that it is the last question, because these teenagers can go on asking!

Sports are perfectly right, and the teenagers should be encouraged not just to be observers of other people playing, but to be participants. What is happening is that thousands of people are just watching, and only a few people, professionals, are playing. This is not a good situation. Every teenager should be a participant, because it is going to give him physical health, it is going to give him a certain agility, it is going to give him a certain intelligence, and it is perfectly youthful.

But just to be an observer - and to be that before a television set - is not right. Five or six hours glued in your chair before a television set just seeing others playing football, or any other sport, is not right. It does not give you any growth. On the contrary, it makes you only an outsider in everything, never a participant, when it is deeply needed to be a participant, involved, committed.

It is good once in a while to see experts playing, to learn - but just to learn; otherwise, everybody should be on the playgrounds. I don't see what the problem is. Young people should play; even elderly people, if they can find time, should play. Even people who have retired, who want to live a little more, should play. We should find games for every age group so that all people, their whole life, are players - according to their age, according to their strength.

But life should be a sport.

Sport has one very beautiful thing which I would like you to remember: it teaches you that it does not matter whether you are defeated or you are victorious. What matters it that you play well, that you play totally, that you play intensely, that you put your all in without holding back. That is sportsmanship. The others can be victorious, there is no jealousy; you can congratulate them and you can celebrate their victory. All that is needed is that you are not holding back, you are putting all your energies into it.

Your whole life should be a playfulness.

So there is nothing wrong in teenagers being interested in sports. The person who is asking seems to be interested that they should be all in the schools learning geography, history, and all kinds of nonsense which is of no use in life. Sports are far more significant, far healthier, far livelier.