I am the first world citizen

Question 1:

Devageet, there is no problem in giving you a few sutras and jokes -- but I will not give them for the nourishment of your poor soul for the simple reason that soul needs no nourishment. The soul is never poor.

The only really poor people in the world are those who are unaware of their soul and the treasures it contains.

There is a poverty of the body, which is man-created. Science declares definitively that we can produce enough food, enough nourishment for more than five billion people; by the end of this century the population of the world will be five billion. Who is preventing them...?

Every six months America is drowning so much food in the oceans that just the cost of taking it to the ocean comes to two billion dollars. And the same is happening in Europe:

every six months they have so much food that they don't have customers for it -- mountains of butter, and they don't have any more warehouses. Keeping it in the warehouses is costly; they have to drown it in the ocean. The last installment in Europe also took two billion dollars... just to drown the butter, cheese and other nourishing food.

At the time they drowned it, one thousand people in Ethiopia were dying of starvation every day. By the end of this century -- if this stupid politics and these ugly lines on the map don't disappear -- then half the population of the world is going to die. Of course, that half will not be in the advanced, scientifically and technically equipped West; it will be in the East.

I am always surprised at what the Eastern politicians are doing: I cannot deny the simple fact that they are trying to gain more nuclear weapons without bothering that their own population will die in such large numbers -- one in two. That means every house will be surrounded by corpses; there will not be even people to bury them or burn them. The by- products of so many people -- for example, in India fifty million people will die -- their death and their rotting bodies will create millions of diseases, about which nobody is bothering at all.

The Indian prime minister goes to Russia to get more military power; he goes to America to get more uranium so that he can also make nuclear weapons. It seems so stupid and so mad... if we could get rid of all the politicians there would really be peace in the world.

And the same applies to the religious people. Now the Vatican pope comes to India, and goes to Mother Teresa's orphanage, where only seven hundred orphans are. He is very much interested in saving them, but he says not a single word when the European market, where he lives, drowns millions of tons of nourishment which could have saved Ethiopia.

What is true about political leaders is also true about your so-called religious leaders.

Their concern seems to be that it will be better that the East is finished... but their part of the world should become more affluent, more rich.

There is also poverty of the mind. That too is man-created, and in that the religious leaders are far ahead of the political leaders. They have stopped all sources of man's intelligence and its growth. All the religions, without exception, have been trying that man should not have intelligence; on the contrary, they are teaching that you should have belief.

Belief is anti-intelligence.

They have been teaching that you should not have doubt -- and doubt is the mother of all invention. Doubt is the foundation of the whole of science, technology. Any search begins with doubt, and disbelief. If you believe and you don't doubt, you stay where you are, and your position goes on deteriorating because the population goes on growing.

You are becoming every moment more poor than you think, because millions of children are born every day. But the pope did not condemn America for destroying food, did not say a single word to the European governments and the European Common Market against destroying nourishment -- which is absolutely ugly when people are dying. With the same money the food could have reached to Ethiopia. But it reached into the deepest ocean, where it will disappear and be eaten by sea animals. It seems there has suddenly arisen a great love for sea animals....

Man has been kept half nourished as far as the body is concerned, because a half nourished man cannot revolt. His sole concern is at least one meal a day -- and that meal is not scientifically nourishing: just to fill the empty stomach is not to have a nourishing meal. You need certain amounts of vitamins, you need certain amounts of minerals, you need certain amounts of chemicals. Nobody seems to be awake, but an undernourished body is weak, in the state of a beggar -- and beggars don't revolt.

A retarded mind cannot even think that the world can progress, that there can be some evolution possible. The retarded mind has been told by all the religions: Be contented as you are. This contentment is not the real contentment; this contentment is to repress any rebellious situation, to protect the rich and to let the poor die. Be contented....

Marx was right when he said, "Religion is the opium of the people." I want to add a few more compliments to religion: it is not only opium, it is poison, it is suicide, it is murder, it is war, it is rape. It is keeping man continuously in slavery, it does not allow any freedom of thought -- and if there is no freedom of thought, consciousness has no possibility to grow. But the soul is beyond these idiots' hands. They don't know anything about it; otherwise they might have tried to keep it also undernourished.

Devageet, your soul is as rich as any Gautam Buddha or as any Jesus or as any Lao Tzu.

Your soul does not need anything -- except discovery. Never think for a moment that the soul is poor; it is the richest exploration. The finding of it will make you far richer than the richest man in the world. Emperors will look like beggars.

Today in America, which is the richest country, the richest men have only four and a half billion dollars; in Japan, the richest man in the world has twenty-one billion dollars. But their souls are completely forgotten. They are only counting their money, knowing perfectly well that all that money is soaked in blood; all that money is out of exploitation of the starving, of the retarded. The retarded and starving have been kept retarded and starving; otherwise it would be difficult to exploit them.

You cannot exploit an intelligent man.

You cannot exploit a man of understanding.

You cannot exploit a man who knows his own eternal being.

Devageet, your soul needs discovery not nourishment. Soul is not material, it is your eternal energy. It was before your death, it will be after your death.

But for your mind, the first sutra:

A smile is the shortest distance between people.

But even smiles have disappeared. People have fallen so far apart that nobody truly smiles; all smiles have become Jimmy Carter smiles. It is very difficult to find a smile which is not plastic. Just stretching your lips from ear to ear does not mean you are smiling; you may be exercising your lips...!

And have you seen any photograph of Jimmy Carter since he was no longer president of America? I have seen many. I have been watching: the smile has simply disappeared; he looks a sad, defeated, frustrated man. The smile was not his, it was political, diplomatic.

This is really ugly, that people cannot even smile at each other. So I can certainly say it is a significant sutra: a smile is the shortest distance between people.

A statesman is a politician who did not get caught.

They are all thieves, they are all cheats, they are criminals. But when they are not caught, then the politician raises his status: he becomes a statesman.

Life without wife is better than wife without life.

While attending a baseball match, the American president, Ronald Reagan, was accidentally hit on the head by a baseball. Next day, the newspaper headlines read:

"Reagan's head X-rayed -- reveals nothing."

A salesman knocks on the front door of a house and a little boy opens it, turns to his mother and calls, "Hey, Mom, it's a live commercial."

There is always something about your success that displeases even your best friends. I have been asked again and again why America destroyed our commune, and I have answered, "Because we were so successful." If we had not been successful nobody would have cared. But because we were successful in transforming a desert -- which had never produced anything green -- into a beautiful oasis, even friends became enemies.

Nobody can tolerate your success. When you are a failure, everybody has the upper hand; he sympathizes with you, he says, "Poor fellow..." But nobody goes to the successful man to congratulate him; it hurts.

I am happy that the richest country in the world became jealous of a small commune of five thousand people. It has proved indubitably that money does not change people, or their mind.

I could have understood it if our commune in India would have been as successful as it was in America... but I am certain in India we would have been destroyed exactly on the same lines. In fact, they are trying, because we are still gathering, things are returning...

people are coming again, and the fear in New Delhi is great. It is strange: they have all the power, but still they cannot see people happy, joyous, creative, loving and living their own way, living their own style, living in freedom.

Because the whole world is living in slavery, the free man cannot be tolerated. The whole world is a failure. Even the richest are still beggars because they want more. What is the difference?... A beggar wants more, the emperor wants more -- their minds are functioning in the same way.

The commune became the target of the whole of American politics, and particularly the fundamentalist Christians -- because they were not so successful in two thousand years in bringing a smile to people's faces, bringing light to their eyes, bringing silences to their hearts. I had never thought that they will become jealous. I thought they had everything -- why should they be jealous of our cars or our airplanes, our roads, our turning the desert into an oasis? They should have been happy and helpful.

But this is not the way insane people function. They became afraid that an authentic communism is happening -- a communism which is not imposed from outside, which has no dictatorship. Just out of the joy of creation, people are creating. This became more dangerous to them than the Soviet Union. It is absolutely out of all proportion.... But success hurts even your best friends, and failure even brings your enemies to sympathize.

One hopes one day things will be totally different. Success will receive its reward, and failure will receive all the support that can transform it into success. But that is not the thing: sympathy is empty. And destroying success is absolutely necessary, because people start comparing: What has the government been doing? -- the richest government, the most powerful government, which could have changed the whole of America into a paradise.

But even in America, though they don't talk about it, there are thirty million beggars.

Their news media people come to India to photograph beggars, to propagate to the whole world that India is a beggar. But nobody knows that America has thirty million beggars -- and by a very strange coincidence, thirty million people who have been eating too much, they are hospitalized. Thirty million are dying on the streets, and exactly thirty million are eating their food... and dying.

And on those thirty million who have become overfed, millions of dollars are wasted because doctors, nurses, medicines... And nobody is bothering about the thirty million people who don't have food, who don't have shelter, who don't have anything, who can't think that tomorrow will be any different. If tomorrow they can get some food to eat, they will be immensely happy.

Anybody who has a little intelligence can change this whole world within ten years, not more than that.

I provoked Ronald Reagan and his company, because I absorbed three hundred beggars into the commune. And those beggars were surprised and shocked because for the first time they were treated as human beings. Letters were written by beggars to me: "We had been treated almost like stray dogs. We had forgotten completely that we are human beings. You have revived our respect, our dignity; you have made us again human."

Nothing was different for them, they were not treated in a different way; they mixed in the commune. That was my fault... and Ronald Reagan began a whole strategy to destroy this commune. Now three hundred, tomorrow three thousand... and these people will create a situation that the American government will not be able to cope with, although they have all the weapons. They can kill, but they cannot cope.

And their democracy -- I have seen -- is such a hypocrisy, so ugly, that everything against the commune and me has been done illegally, so obviously illegally that although I don't know any law, even I could say to them, "This is absolutely illegal."

I was asked in the jail not to write my name, but to write instead the name, David Washington. I said, "I don't understand. That is not my name. You are forcing me into an illegal act. I will not write that name... Do you think I am an idiot? Can't I see your whole plan? I write David Washington and tomorrow you poison me, and the world will not be even able to trace where I have disappeared, because your register will not show that I ever entered, so the question does not arise that you have killed me."

I said, "Forget all about it. You write whatever you want to write. If you want David Washington, write David Washington." And that law-imposing authority they call marshal in America was asking me to do such an illegal act....

I said, "You should have at least removed your coat on which a great seal shows:

Marshal, Department of Justice. Be ashamed, at least, of your coat. You write, I will sign."

He thought that was a good compromise, so he wrote my name, David Washington -- and I signed my name. He looked at it... and my signature is such that even a man who knows Hindi cannot understand it. He said, "What is it?"

I said, "It must be David Washington. If my name is David Washington, this is David Washington." I said, "I have made it clear. My signatures are world-known. Don't try to be clever and cunning. If anything happens to me you will be caught for two reasons: my name is written in your handwriting, and my signature is well-known. It is not something personal; it is almost copyrighted in all the countries. Everybody knows my signature, and nobody knows what it means."

Their plan failed. Just before sunrise I was shifted to another jail, because what was the point? -- now they could not kill me in that jail, and to keep me there was dangerous, because a young woman was also brought on the airplane, sitting by my side. She had seen me speaking on the television many times, so she said, "I am immensely glad that I have the chance for a few hours to sit by your side. I know everything is being done to you illegally. They have not issued any arrest warrant, and they arrested you; they have not shown any reason, any cause, and they have not bailed you."

For three days the government attorney continued to argue, and finally his last statement was, "We don't have any proof, any evidence, and we cannot legally ask the magistrate to prevent this man from being bailed out. But the government wants that he should not be bailed out." And America has been proclaiming to the whole world that their justice department is absolutely separate from their administrative bureaucracy.

And I was not given bail, although they could not prove any reason why I was arrested, why no arrest warrant was issued from the court, why I should not be bailed out. Still, the government wants that I should not be bailed out....

Only in very few moments have I felt my respect for women falling. I have always respected women, and I have given them superiority. But once in a while women have done such ugly acts against me that I had to think twice whether to continue to give them respect or to withdraw it.

The magistrate was a woman, and she did not allow the bail. Even the jailer on the way back to jail from the court told me, "I am surprised... this is the first time. There was no reason at all for anything, they had nothing against you. I had prepared all your clothes and everything so that you can be released; there is no reason to prevent you. But now I know why you have not been given bail: that woman has been blackmailed, she has been told that she will be made a federal judge"... she was an ordinary state judge, and becoming a federal judge is tremendously prestigious. I used to think that women have heart. That day I hesitated a little.

Now they have turned the desert again into a desert; they did not allow us to sell the property. One man was ready to purchase it at forty million dollars -- which was nothing, because the property was worth at least three hundred million dollars. Even the government has appraised it at one hundred million. We were ready to give it to him for forty, but the government did not give us the permission to sell it. The man was suffering from cancer and doctors had said he could not live more than one month. If it can be stopped for one month, it will be easy... then the property cannot be sold.

The man died within a month, and even to the last day he was trying hard. The moment he died, immediately the permission was given, but the permission was given in such a way that any buyer of the property... The government has been preventing, creating a thousand and one difficulties. In one year the desert has settled slowly back. Strange -- they will be happy only when it becomes a desert.

Success is never forgiven.

If you see so many people against me around the world, that is nothing but a measurement of my success. If all the prime ministers and the presidents and the popes and the shankaracharyas are against me, the reason is that they are local, ordinary people.

I am the first world citizen -- and that hurts them very much. I have been loved by all races, all religious people from every nook and corner of the world.

Just now there is an exhibition going on in the Soviet Union. I have sannyasins in the Soviet Union; of course, they have to remain underground -- they cannot declare that they are sannyasins -- but there are a large number of sannyasins. Our stall of books is overcrowded; it is the most successful stall even in Russia. But the people don't have money, so they are stealing books. I have informed my people, "Don't pay any attention - - let them steal. At least those books will reach to millions of people, and if you catch somebody red-handed, just tell him, 'I'm not against stealing; what can you do if you don't have any money? Just keep one thing in mind: when you have read it, pass it on.

That is the price.'" They confiscated first all our videos, all our audios -- because they were worried, one never knows what is in them.... Now they have released the audios and videos. They must have seen them first, the KGB must have watched everything!

The president of the exhibition was so surprised that an unknown man, who has never come to Russia... and you cannot send any book into Russia, you cannot send any newspaper, you cannot even correspond with people; everything is censored or confiscated. They could not believe that such a crowd would be there on our bookstall the whole day. All the other bookstalls were empty.

The president came to Lani, who went from here, saying, "What is the matter?" Looking at my beard in one of the pictures he said, "Is this man something like Leo Tolstoy?" -- because Leo Tolstoy had a big beautiful beard. "Why are so many people around here the whole day?" They don't know that most of them are my sannyasins! I am the only underground movement in Russia... and there was trouble. The KGB thinks that I am an American agent, and America thinks I am a Russian agent -- and the Indian government thinks it is unfortunate that I was born here, because they cannot deport me. That is their trouble!

Success brings so many troubles. If I had known...

There is a beautiful song of Meera which says, "If I had known before that love brings so many agonies, I would have informed the whole world that nobody should fall in love." I can say to the world that success is not a bed of roses -- not even mixed with thorns; it is completely thorns.

"I have got insomnia really bad," complained a man to his doctor.

"Insomnia," said the doctor, "is insomnia. How bad can it be? What do you mean?

Insomnia is insomnia -- how can it be bad? What do you mean by saying 'really bad insomnia'?"

"Well," said the man, "I have got it really bad. I can't even sleep when it is time to get up."

The trouble arises... he cannot sleep when it is time to get up! If you look in people's minds, their bodies are starved, their minds are retarded.

A patient was making his first visit to the doctor. "And whom did you consult about your illness before you came to me?" the doctor enquired.

"Only the druggist down at the corner," replied the patient.

The doctor did not conceal his contempt for the medical advice of people not qualified to practice medicine. "And what sort of ridiculous advice did that fool give you?" demanded the doctor.

"He told me," replied the patient innocently, "to see you."

Ronald Reagan was grooming himself in front of the mirror before leaving to make an important speech on television.

"I wonder how many great men there are in the world?" he mused.

Nancy looked up and said, "One less than you think."

Question 2:

Veetdharm, your question shows the essential Indian mind. You may be Indian or not, it doesn't matter. It is a great question! Why should you be worried about anybody else's sex? Are you some kind of sex expert?

You say, "Too many times I come across women who have given up sex. I don't have the feeling that they have transcended sex."

In what way can you feel whether anybody has transcended sex or not? Is there any kind of thermometer? If they are saying they have given up, who are you to doubt them? and on what grounds?

Your question shows more about you, not about the women you have come across....

"Could you please say something to them?" This is a strange question! Is it your question or their question? If they have any problem, they will ask. What concern do you have?

Why are you worried about somebody's sex? And you want me to tell them, not to tell you... and it is your question!

If you had gone to any shankaracharya, he would have condemned those women. I condemn you; it is your repressed sexuality. Your eyes are blinded with your sexuality, so you cannot see anybody else who is beyond sex.

Just watch your own state.

You have suppressed so much sex. I can say definitely without knowing you or who you are, that your eyes have a thick layer of sexual repression. This colors everything into sex.

A psychotherapist was treating a patient. Just to check on his mind, he drew a line on the paper and asked him, "What does this line remind you of?"

The patient said, "It cannot remind me of anything else; it reminds me of women. It is so clear... what is the point of asking?"

The psychologist drew a triangle and the man said, "This is too much. It reminds me even more...!"

The psychologist drew a circle. The patient stood up and he said, "Are you some kind of sex maniac or what? This is absolutely woman.... I thought you were a psychoanalyst -- you need psychoanalysis."

The psychoanalyst was at a loss about what to do. Just then a camel passed by, and he said, "Just one last question. What does that camel remind you of?"

He said, "Don't provoke me, or it will be your responsibility. I may do something for which you will repent your whole life. That is a pure, beautiful woman!"

The psychoanalyst said, "Just the last question, the very last. What else reminds you of women?"

The patient said, "What a nonsense question! Everything reminds me of women, there is no question of any exception."

Now, does what he is saying reflect the psychoanalyst or his mind?

Veetdharm, you are a sex maniac. Those women may have transcended; if they have not transcended, just seeing you they will be immediately transcending -- fast, quick, urgent...

emergency! You are drunk with your repressed sex. It is the most intoxicating thing, and accumulating over many years -- and that's what happens in this country.

Here everything reminds people of sex: a straight line, an animal... it defeats all intelligence. One cannot conceive even in a dream that a camel, the ugliest animal in the world, reminds you of a beautiful woman. Even Sophia Loren may never have thought that somebody will see her in a camel. There are people here from Italy, they can inform her....

A drunk was standing watching a man enter a revolving door. As the door swung round, out stepped a pretty girl.

"Unbelievable!" he muttered. "Absolutely unbelievable!"

You don't see that you are drunk. In fact, nobody looks at himself. People are looking at others, judging others, and these are the real criminals. Without any doubt, I say that these are the sickest people in the world -- those who judge others. In the first place, it is not your business. In the second place, you are interfering into somebody else's space; you are going against his individuality and freedom, and you are without any cause suspecting his truth, his sincerity.

The day I left America I received a letter from a bishop of Wasco County, who had been for almost five years condemning my Rolls Royces. In every Sunday sermon he was not preaching Jesus Christ, he was preaching me and my Rolls Royces. The day I was leaving he wrote a letter to me, "Now you are leaving, it will be great kindness on your part if you can donate one Rolls Royce to this church." Now, this shows the man....

I informed him, "Would you like all ninety-three, or only one?"

And a letter came, "If you can give all ninety-three, that is just the right thing. You are really great. I'm very sorry that I condemned you for five years. You are a man to be worshiped."

It is a very strange world if you understand people: whatever they are saying shows more about them than it shows about the person they are talking about.

"I have brought a frog," said Professor Bradley, beaming at his class in elementary zoology, "fresh from the pond, in order that we might study its outer appearance and later dissect it."

He carefully unwrapped the package he was carrying, and inside was a neatly prepared ham sandwich. The good professor looked at it with astonishment.

"Odd," he said, "I distinctly remember having eaten my lunch."

And these are the idiots who are professors, who are judges, who are police commissioners, who are governors, who are prime ministers, who are presidents....

My own understanding is that a man who does not know himself... this should be the only criterion of man's idiocy. According to that criterion, only the self-realized people are saying something that is coming from their very heart. Others are just befooling you.

They may be learned, they may be clever, they may be able to deceive the whole world, but they cannot deceive themselves.

Just watch your own mind, and see what I am saying.

I have saved another question from this man, to prove... because I don't want to say anything without proof. I don't know the man... but now I will read his second question.

That will prove what I have told you.

Question 3:

Now, do you need any other proof? This man writes these two questions and is not able to figure out himself that it is his problem he is projecting on others. And he is forty- seven -- it is time not to be foolish. But it seems as age grows, foolishness also grows.

Old fools are really fools. Young fools have a possibility to transcend, but old fools -- where will they transcend? What is the alternative?

The old boss had managed to get a date with his secretary, but was worried about his diminished potency. So he went to the doctor and asked for something to pep him up. The doctor gave him two pills and said, "Take these with your dinner tonight and you should not have any trouble performing later on."

So the old man and his date went to a beautiful restaurant, and when they had ordered their soup, the old man took the waiter aside and asked him to put the two pills into his soup before he served it.

They waited for twenty minutes, and still the waiter had not brought their soup. So the old man angrily called the waiter over and said, "What the hell has happened to the soup?"

"I'm sorry, sir," said the waiter, "but I did what you ordered and put those pills into your soup, and now I'm just waiting for the noodles to lie down again."

Veetdharm, it is time! Let the noodles lie down.

But I know the repressed sex will continue in your mind. Now the only way is to go deeper into silence and meditation. Become more watchful. Drop all this idiotic judgment about others. Your responsibility is to transform you, not the whole world. Don't try to be a savior. If you can save yourself, that's enough.

You have passed almost two-thirds of your life, but you are just in time, forty-seven....

Perhaps thirteen years are available for the whole of humanity to live, and thirteen years are also available for you to live -- so you are exactly synchronizing with existence.

Nobody else is going to have more time, so don't be jealous. Even the youngest child will live only thirteen years, most probably. There seems to be no reason to expect otherwise, because the so-called wise are suggesting, "Stop cow slaughter and there will be no world war"..."Learn yogic hopping and there will be no world war."

A Jew was caught in Adolf Hitler's Germany before the second world war by a police officer, who said, "Listen, Jew, do you know the real reason why Germany is not as rich as it should be, is not the world's greatest power? Why did Germany get defeated in the first world war?"

The Jew said, "I think it is because of the bicycle riders." The policeman looked around.

There was a crowd listening to what was happening, what the Jew says.

He said, "Bicycle riders? What is the connection between bicycle riders and Germany's defeat?"

The Jew said, "What connection is there between Jews and Germany's defeat? It is the same. Destroy bicycles and I promise you, Germany will start rising in riches, power, it will become a world power."

The policeman said, "You seem to be absolutely mad!"

He said, "If I am mad, then what is Adolf Hitler and the people who are following him?"

Adolf Hitler lied completely saying that it is the Jews -- which is absolutely irrelevant -- because of the Jews, Germany is not getting on, it is being defeated, damaged. And in fact, the Jews were the only people in Germany who were productive and creative. If he had not been against the Jews, there is every possibility that now Germany would have been ruling the whole world. Because Albert Einstein was also a Jew, working under Adolf Hitler, but seeing that millions of Jews were simply slaughtered...

Of course, he would not have been killed; he was their only hope of conquering the world, because he was going to produce the atom bomb. But he escaped from Germany and wrote a letter to President Roosevelt of America saying, "I can create atomic weapons which can destroy on such a large scale -- the biggest city within a few minutes -- that if you want to win the second world war, I'm the man. I give you the guarantee."

Roosevelt was immensely happy, because Adolf Hitler was winning continually. For five years he had not known any defeat, he went on winning. Wherever he entered he was winning.

It was a Jew, Albert Einstein, who produced the atom bomb. It might have been produced in Berlin, but it was produced in Washington, and that changed the whole of history. But any idiotic idea... and people have been forced to remain so retarded that they go on following it.

For example, Veetdharm, if you are a Hindu, then most probably everything that you are doing is going to lead you to an ugly old age, full of sexuality. Hindus believe that cow milk is the purest thing, the most spiritual. In fact, except for man no animal drinks milk his whole life. Milk is only drunk in the beginning, for a few weeks, a few months at the most, before he starts eating and digesting solid food -- it is just a temporary measure. It is only man who goes on drinking milk his whole life.

You don't understand: the milk you go on drinking is not a woman's milk, it is the milk of a cow, which has the chemistry and alchemy for the bull, not for the man. These Hindu monks go on drinking milk thinking that this is a great thing to keep them celibate. They become bulls! -- because that is the food for bulls, and it has the capacity to create that much sexuality. This is the greatest danger.

Strange things have been suggested to you by stupid people. They tell you, "Take a cold bath before sunrise, and it will keep you celibate." That is pure nonsense. If you want to be celibate, take a good hot bath after sunrise, so the noodles can lie down. In a cold bath noodles will stand up.

But this is for the first time I am saying this... I wanted to say it always, but I avoided it.

Why unnecessarily wrestle with idiots, very ancient idiots? Cold water is certainly going to make you more sexual. Ice cold water is suggested -- and before sunrise, so the water does not become even lukewarm. Hindu sannyasins go at three o'clock in the morning to take a cold bath, shivering, but they don't know what they are doing. They will feel more sexual -- and then a good cow's milk... that will make them a bull. And a bull with noodles standing up -- you are finished!

Question 4:

Kavisho, it is true: my work consists in killing you lovingly, because that is the only possibility of bringing you back into a new light, into a new life.

I kill only that which is not yours, but you believe it is you. I kill, in short, your personality, and leave only that which cannot be destroyed: your eternal being.

The moment your personality drops, you will certainly feel like dancing and celebrating and enjoying. And suddenly this universe will become totally different, because now you have fresh eyes, utterly innocent, uncorrupted by any society, any religion, any politician, any kind of ideology.

Once your personality can be taken away from you -- and it is not you -- then you are left in your utter nudity, in your existential being... the beauty of it, the luxury of it, the festivity of it, will start functioning. It will bring great creativity to you, great intelligence to you, great love to you. You will forget how you lived so long in misery, so long in jealousy, so long in ambitions, all kinds of desires which made you a beggar. You will not believe that this eternal freedom was always available for you, just you had to look into it.

I have called you all here. Perhaps you may not know that I have called you here. It is not that you have come on your own; that would be very difficult. On your own you would be doing something stupid somewhere -- giving birth to more children, worshiping before a stone statue which is made by man, praying to a God which does not exist, which is only an unproved hypothesis, afraid of hell, desiring for heaven. And all is just fiction....

But the personality needs many fictions to support it. Itself, it is a by-product of all these fictions.

Your individuality needs no fiction.

It is your authentic existential being.

I give you that which you already have, and I take away all that you never really had, but you believed you had. I destroy your belief, and that is my way of destroying your personality.

And once your personality is gone, Kavisho, you will become contagious. Your joy, your celebration, your song, your dance will spread into other people's hearts. You will become a catalytic agent. Without knowing, people will start joining you in your dance, in your laughter, in your joy.

What you are saying makes me immensely happy. I would like all my people to come to the same space.

The worried father telephoned the family doctor and said that his teenage son had come down with gonorrhea. "He says," continued the father, "that he has not had sex with anyone but the maid, so it has to be her."

"Don't worry so much," advised the kindly doctor. "These things happen."

"I know, doctor," said the father. "But I have to admit that I have been to bed with her myself, and I seem to have the same symptoms."

"That is unfortunate," said the doctor.

"Not only that -- I think I have passed it on to my wife."

"Christ," said the doctor. "That means we all have it."

Just go on passing.... Just as disease can be contagious, health can also be. Just as misery can be contagious, blissfulness can also be.

One lighted being is bound to create an urgent, instant longing in others to have the same light. One person dancing and singing with abandon is bound to affect people, because they are also carrying the same song hidden, the same dance. They have been crippled by their society. They also have the same eyes for beauty, but they had been blinded by the society. They have also the energy to celebrate, but this society does not believe in celebration.

This society is absolutely insane. It believes in money, it believes in power, it believes in violence, it believes in rapes, it believes in murder, it believes in all kinds of crimes, and it believes in all kinds of fictions, but it does not understand even a little bit about itself.

The moment a small window opens into you, you are a transformed being. The new man is born in you.

Kavisho, enjoy this celebration as much as possible, because whatever remaining falsities, personalities, parts here and there may have remained, they will be thrown away by your dance. Enjoy... this existence is for your enjoyment. It is our existence, it is our home.

Nobody is a sinner except those who don't celebrate.

To me, celebration is the only virtue.

A man was visiting his friend George, who was in hospital dying. The friend said, "Well, anyway George, you have lived a good life. For sure you will be going to heaven."

George replied, "Yes, I have lived a good life, but there is something I never told you."

"What is that?" asked his friend.

"Remember that time I went to Chicago on business last year? Well, I made love with a beautiful woman there."

Shocked, his friend replied, "I can't believe it. I mean, your wife, your kids -- did you not think about them?"

"Yes, I did," replied George, "and then I thought I might as well see what heaven is like, since I already knew what hell was like."

You have known hell; now you are entering, Kavisho, into heaven. Everybody has suffered for many lives in hell. Hell is nowhere in the geography of the world, of the universe; it is in your distorted mind. It is another name for a distorted mind, and heaven is another name for a mind which has transcended itself and reached into a space of no- mind. Hence my insistence continuously for silence. If you cannot reach to silence through music... because music is next to silence....

To create silence I have been giving you all the meditations, all these small gaps... not that I am short of words, not that I have forgotten what I was going to say, but just to allow you to have a little experience of silence, which on your own you find difficult. But in the communion of so many silent people, and in the communion of a man who has reached to the ultimate center of being, it is possible to be infected.

Blessed are those who allow themselves to be contagious to festivity, to love, to peace, to silence, to celebration.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here