The alphabet of rejoicing

Question 1:

Sarjano, I know your heart. I know your love. I know your deep gratitude and respect -- but it is human, once in a while to slip from the path. And it happens from a necessary psychological principle: you start taking me for granted. This is one of the ancientmost diseases of the mind. Once you start taking me for granted, then you are bound to behave unconsciously.

Never take me for granted.

I am simply alive just for you.

My work is finished and my boat has been waiting for long to take me to the other shore, but your love and the fear that without me, you may be lost... and you are coming so close, that if I can manage to wait a little longer on this shore, I can give all of my people what I have received from existence. But the moment you take me for granted, immediately you forget, become unconscious, create distance.

I don't want to hit anybody, but except hitting you I cannot wake you up when you have fallen asleep. Consciously, whatever you say is absolutely right, that you would rather cut your tongue than say a word against me, that you would rather die than offend me. These are not just poetic assertions. I understand you perfectly, but you still have the unconscious mind and that unconscious mind manages to sabotage whatever you are gaining in your consciousness.

In mythological terms, it is a conflict between good and evil. In a more contemporary psychological way, it is the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious is afraid -- and its fear is real. If your whole being becomes conscious, it will be the death of the unconsciousness in you, and the death of mortality in you, and the opening of eternal life.

Your unconscious mind does not want to commit suicide. It will give you every resistance; hence once in a while it will catch you unawares, and something will come out of you that you had never meant. But if I let it go without hitting you, then your unconscious will be gaining more and more power over your conscious. Hitting you is simply a loving way to put the unconscious back and to help your consciousness to be stronger, more powerful, more capable to understand what comes from your unconscious and what comes from your conscious.

The unconscious is not your friend.

The unconscious is all the past centuries, it is carrying the whole evolution of man. It is barbarous, it is animal. Only a small part of your being has become conscious, but that small being can manage to dispel the whole unconsciousness if you don't become a victim of it again and again.

Now Veena is sitting in her perfect beauty, relaxed, but she does not know: the whole night I have had to sharpen my sword for her! The closer you come to me, the more you love me, the more you should remember that at any time I can hit you.

I have told you the most beautiful story in Zen, about a master thief. He was no ordinary thief, because in his whole life nobody had been able to catch him red-handed. Even the emperor was amazed at his craftsmanship, his art in stealing. The man was so perfect...

but he was getting old. The situation had come to the point in Tokyo that whosoever's house was visited by the master thief, bragged about it. It was a great honor, because it was not that he would go just to anybody, but only to the super-rich. It was a certificate that the master thief had stolen things from some family, that they bragged about it.

But as he was getting old, his son said, "I don't know anything of your art, your fame -- and you have the strangest fame. Before you leave the world, please let me understand the secret of your greatness. Your stealing is not just for money; your stealing is simply to keep your mastery sharpened so you don't forget the art."

It is almost like a musician. Once Yehudi Menuhin was asked, "If you don't practice one day, what happens?"

He said, "Only I understand that the thing is not as perfect as it would have been; nobody else will find any difference. If I don't practice for two days, then the critics will become aware that something is missing. If I don't practice for three days then everybody will be able to hear that something is wrong, the master is not at his height."

Every musician practices for hours, sometimes eight hours per day. Even the most famous musician practices for hours, because the art is so subtle and so delicate that it can slip out of your hands if you miss just a few days' practice.

So the boy said, "Before you leave the world, help me to know the secret so that I can practice in front of you, and you can correct where I am going wrong."

The father said, "Tonight you come with me."

They went to a very rich house, and the young man was trembling with fear and the old man was going as if he were going for a morning walk -- so at ease, with such tremendous confidence. The old man made a hole in a wall to enter into the house... the young man was perspiring, and it was a cold night. But the old man was doing his job so silently that although he was making a hole in the wall, there was no noise. When the hole was ready, the old man slipped in, and signaled the boy to come in.

His heart was throbbing, naturally, but he was wondering... his old father is going as if it is their own house! He had the master key that can open all the doors.

He opened door upon door, and the boy became more and more afraid, he started cursing himself: Why have I asked him to teach me? This is not for me. If I can manage to survive tonight, finished -- I don't want to learn this art. It is beyond my capacity.

The man was doing things, so at home, and he took the boy into the innermost part of the house, opened a big cupboard and there were very costly things inside, valuable diamonds, very costly, and rare clothes. Everything was dazzling. The boy could not believe his eyes, that people have so much money.

The old man said, "Get in!" He got in and the old man went out and -- it was such a great surprise -- closed the door, locked it with the boy inside, and shouted "Thief! Thief!" and ran out!

The boy said, "Is this my father, or my murderer? And what kind of teaching is this? I was wondering if I could survive -- now there is no possibility." The whole house was awake. The servants were awake. People were searching every nook and corner, and a maidservant came into the room where he was inside the cupboard. He knew nothing of what to do, but spontaneously he started scratching on the cupboard... as if there are rats inside.

This was not a calculated act, it was absolutely spontaneous. Even he could not believe what he was doing. And the maidservant, just to look for the rats, because there were valuable clothes, opened the door. She had a candle in her hand, and the boy blew out the candle, and rushed out. But he was seen, so the whole family and the whole neighborhood followed him. He had never run so fast in his whole life -- he could have become an Olympic champion the way he was going! -- just like the wind.

It was a question of life and death, and he was praying to God, "This is the first and last time, just save me!"

Then suddenly he came across a well. He took up a big rock and threw it in the well -- the whole crowd that was following him stopped. They thought he had jumped in the well:

they had heard the sound, so they stopped there, and they said, "Now there is no worry.

Either he will be dead, or in the morning we will pull him out and shoot him."

And the young man reached his house, and again a great surprise: the old man is fast asleep, snoring! He could not believe that this man was his father! He shook him, and the father said, "Don't disturb me. You have come back, that's enough. I know the conclusion; the rest of the story you can tell me in the morning. There is nothing else to learn, I have given you my whole art.

"I am not acting out of mind. I am acting out of no-mind, in utter silence. It is my meditation. Just go to sleep."

The boy was amazed that he did not even want to know through what difficulties he had passed. He had been almost on the verge of being caught! He could not sleep the whole night: his heart was throbbing, and again and again as he would close his eyes, he would see the nightmare that those people had caught him, and he would wake up again. In the morning the father did not say anything, he was just sitting, with his tea. The boy said, "But at least ask me what happened!"

He said, "You have come home; everything has gone right. You could not have come back if you had acted out of your mind, so you don't need to learn anything more. All that you need to learn is how to act out of no-mind."

"Still," the boy said, "please listen to my story."

He said, "Okay, if you want you can tell it. But I am not interested. All my interest was in whether you came back or not."

He told his whole story, and the old man asked, "Scratching like the rats were destroying the clothes -- was it your thought?"

He said, "I had never thought about scratching the cupboard like rats destroying the clothes... I don't know how it came to me."

His father said, "That's the way -- you don't come in. Let your no-mind take possession of the whole situation. How did you figure out that to throw the rock in the well would stop them?"

He said, "I don't know... just the rock was there, the well was there, and the people were just on my heels. Suddenly a flash... and I took the rock and threw it in the well. It was not my act."

The old man said, "This is what the ancient masters have said -- action without action. I am not a thief, I have just chosen stealing as a way of enlightenment."

You cannot believe it; anything can become a way to enlightenment, even stealing. But it has to be not your action, it has to come from your no-mind.

So now there are three things, Sarjano: the conscious mind, which you know and out of which whatever you have written to me has come. Behind and below is the unconscious mind, from where all kinds of sabotage will come, disruptions, to destroy the whole possibility of consciousness.

Without your knowing, you have been disrespectful. I know that with your knowing, you will be the last person to be disrespectful, and it does not matter to me whether you are disrespectful to me or not. The point is, I don't want your unconscious mind to sabotage the beauty that has arisen in your consciousness.

Below is unconscious, above is no-mind, or super-conscious. I will hit you if I see that the unconscious is pulling you down, and I will hit you if I see that you are not moving fast enough from the conscious to the super-conscious. Those are the two times when I will hit you.

It does not matter... I have not hit you because you were disrespectful. Remember it -- because I have been condemned my whole life: from my very childhood I don't know a day when I was not condemned for doing things not in the way people wanted. I have become so accustomed and at ease with condemnation, disrespect, notoriousness -- everything -- so that is not the question. Just Sarjano's disrespect will not add anything; it will be just a dewdrop in an ocean, so that is not the problem. The problem is that it will disrupt your consciousness, your love, your peace that is growing, your meditativeness that is growing, and I cannot see that happening.

And this is to be understood by all, because today it is Sarjano's case; tomorrow it can be your case. These hits are out of sheer love. If I don't care about you, why should I bother?

The whole night I could not sleep... because I have not used the sword for many years, but just to prepare it for Veena -- and she is sitting just here, laughing. If she had laughed before, I could have slept at ease.

I don't want to cut your heads, but if you insist I will have to do it -- reluctantly, but there is no other way. If you only understand the language of the sword, then I will have to speak that language. I am not using it; I am using only words.

So be careful. Whenever you start getting angry at me, remember: it is your unconscious that is disrupting your love, it has nothing to do with me. When you start thinking something against me, remember it is your unconscious that is feeding the idea to you.

Otherwise, whatever you said is so beautiful, Sarjano, I would like to read it again so that everybody understands clearly. It is not only a question, it is a statement from the very deepest core of his heart.

"

WHAT DO YOU SEE IN MY EYES NOW, AFTER YOU HIT MY HEAD SO HARD?"

I see your eyes. I see you -- the same as you were before the hit, after the hit. But if you were not hit you would not have been so full of love, with tears of joy in your eyes.

"WHAT DO YOU SEE IN MY EYES NOW, AFTER YOU HIT MY HEAD SO HARD? OH BELOVED MASTER, THE BLESSING OF YOUR SWORD HAS LEFT ONLY ONE WOUND, THAT EVEN THE SILENCE BLOSSOMED OUT OF THIS MEDITATION HAS NOT HEALED: HAVE I REALLY BEEN DISRESPECTFUL...?"

No, you have not been disrespectful. But you don't know: there are so many dark sides of you which you don't identify with -- they were disrespectful.

"... IN MY UNAWARENESS? FOR I WILL RATHER CUT MY TONGUE BEFORE SAYING ANYTHING AGAINST YOU."

No, that won't help. You can cut my tongue, your tongue; we both can sit in silence because we cannot speak -- but I will go on doing what I am doing without the tongue, and you will go on once in a while being disrespectful, without the tongue. The tongue is not needed, just your face can show it, your eyes can show it. Just the smallest gesture can show it.

Don't think in terms of cutting your tongue. Think in terms of from where within you any ugly thing crept into your conscious... and destroy that unconscious. The tongue has nothing to do with it; it is only a means, which the conscious mind can use, the unconscious mind can use, the super-conscious mind can use. I am using it; it is a perfect mechanism to convey things which cannot be conveyed. And finally, you say, "And I will kill myself with joy, rather than be unloving to You."

That is easier, to die for someone.

The real difficulty is to live for someone.

Many have died in the name of love, because death is a single-blow thing; but living for someone because of your love is a long time process. I don't want you to make this commune a Jim Jonestown -- that is the Christian stupidity. I want this place to be the place of life and love and rejoicing.

If you love me, rejoice. If you love me, sing. If you love me, dance. I don't ask you for death. Death will not prove anything, it will simply prove your incapacity to live for my love. But that has been taught for as long as we can go backwards, that dying for love is a great martyrdom. It is sheer stupidity.

I am not here to teach you all these stupid things that have happened in the past. People have died for Christ, people have died for Mohammed, people have died for Buddha. But that does not show their love, it simply shows their unconsciousness. The unconsciousness was destroying their love, now it has destroyed even themselves.

Here you have to learn a totally new alphabet, the alphabet of rejoicing. If you love me, rejoice. In spite of everything, rejoice. The more blissful you are, the more you are laughing, the more you are dancing, the more I know you have given me, offered me your flowers of love.

This is a temple of love and laughter.

Never forget it for a single moment.

As the boat was sinking, the skipper called out, "Does anyone know how to pray?"

"I do," replied pope the polack, who was on board the ship.

"Okay, go ahead and pray," said the captain. "The rest of us will put on life jackets; we're one short."

An old English gentleman was on trial before the high court of Australia, for the crime of making sexual advances to an ostrich.

"Before passing sentence," announced the judge, "do you have anything to say?"

"Your honor," said the Englishman, "if I had known you were going to make such a fuss about it, I would not have married the bloody bird!"

Here we are not masochists or sadists. This is not a sick psychological place -- as all the churches are -- belonging to any religion. This is a pagan, natural, simple, playful place.

If you can laugh heartily, this is your prayer. If you can dance with abandon, if you can sway with the music, that is the only yoga I teach.

I don't believe in distorting your bodies.

I believe in transforming your souls.

Question 2:

Milarepa, I don't know what I said the other morning -- I don't carry unnecessarily luggage from the past. But I will explain it to you this morning, in spite of the fact that I don't know whether I made the statement or not.

Music is certainly next to silence.

There is a certain thing to be understood: Music does not consist, in the first place, of words, language. It consists of pure sounds, and it consists of pure sounds only to those who don't know anything beyond sound. Those who know silence -- for them, the whole gestalt changes.

You see my five fingers, but somebody can see the five gaps between my fingers.

Ordinarily you will not see the gaps, you will see five fingers. But the gaps are more real:

fingers may come and go, gaps will remain.

Between sounds of music there are gaps of silence. The authentic music consists not of sounds, but of the gaps. Sounds come and go; those gaps remain. And music can make you aware of those gaps more beautifully than anything else; hence I have to say that music comes next to silence. But it is possible even the musician may not be aware of it, unless his music is his meditation too. Then, soon, the shift from sounds to silence.

The ancient Chinese story is that whenever a musician becomes perfect, he throws away his instruments; whenever a swordsman becomes perfect, he throws away his sword.

It is a very strange saying and goes back almost five thousand years, because it has been quoted by Lao Tzu as an ancient saying. What does it mean? Chuang Tzu was asked, "This seems to be a very strange kind of proverb. When the musician becomes perfect we should have thought that he would have purchased perfect musical instruments, and the saying says he throws away his instruments."

Chuang Tzu told a very beautiful story to explain it. There are things which cannot be explained without beautiful stories, because stories give you enough space and freedom, enough gaps for you to fill with your own being. Prose is too tight and too mundane, so either poetry has to be used or a story has to be used. These stories are such that even a small child may be able to understand, or even an old man may not be able to understand; the question is whether he gets the undercurrent of the story.

The story is: A man reached to the emperor of China and said, "I am the greatest master of the art of arrows, targets, archery, and I have come to ask you to declare in the whole empire that if anybody wants to compete with me, he should come forward; otherwise give time, and if nobody comes, then declare me the champion archer of your empire."

The king knew that man. He never missed a target. As far as human understanding is concerned, he was perfect. What more can you expect? One hundred percent success -- success cannot be more than that. The king said, "I know about you. And I know that there is nobody who can compete with you."

When he was saying this, the servant of the king, who had raised him from his childhood... he was not just a servant but almost a father to him. The emperor's father had died, and he had given the responsibility to his servant to take care of the child till he is of age, and see that no trouble arises and that he succeeds to the throne. So the emperor respected the servant as much as perhaps he would have respected his own father. The servant had done immense service to him; he had taken care of the whole empire till he was of age.

The servant said, "Before you say anything to this man, I would like to interrupt. First listen to me. I know a man far in the hills who is really the champion. Compared to him, this man is just a child. He is a giant!"

The king said, "How do you know he is a giant?"

And the servant said, "He is so perfect in archery that he has thrown away his arrows, his bow -- and you know the ancient proverb.... Send this man to that old man in the hills."

The archer could not believe it. What kind of perfection is this, when you throw away your arrows and your bow? But the emperor said, "You will have to go. I cannot deny anything to the man you have seen. Although he is my servant, deep down in my heart he is as great as my father. So you will have to go to that man, and if he recommends it, you will be declared the champion."

The man had to go, although feeling a little weird and awkward: What kind of a stupid thing...? The hills were great and very steep and it was a long journey, but he managed.

Slowly, slowly he also became interested -- what kind of perfection...? He reached finally to a small cave. He met an old man and asked him, "Are you the famous archer?"

He said, "Archery? I remember, I have heard the word. It must be fifty years ago."

The archer said, "How old are you?"

The old man said, "I am not capable of saying, because here there is no calendar, one does not know how time passes, but maybe one hundred and twenty, or one hundred and thirty."

The man said, "I am the greatest archer in the empire and by a stupid servant's advice the emperor has sent me to you. Unless you give me a certificate, I cannot be accepted as the champion."

The old man said, "Champion? -- so you have been learning archery to be a champion?

Then you don't love archery -- it is motivated, it is goal-oriented. You can never be perfect because you are not directly related to archery. Archery is only a means; the end is championhood. But don't be worried. You will have to pass just a little test, and I will give you the certificate -- although as long as I am alive, remember that you are just a so- called champion. But because I am not a competitor, you can enjoy being the champion.

Just come out with me."

The old man was so old... his back was bent, he had become hunch-backed. He took the young man, who was in the prime of his youth, to a cliff. The rock of the cliff, a small rock, hung high over a valley, thousands of feet below. And the old man went on that small rock -- just a little missed step and nobody would be able to find you, not even your pieces could be gathered. He went to the very end of the cliff and stood with his feet on the edge of the cliff, just on his toes. He was standing there unwavering, as if he was standing on solid ground, and he said to the young man, "Come."

The young man took the first step and started trembling. "My god, what kind of test is this? and what has it to do with archery?" But he has to do it because the championship is in his hands. After the first step he fell down on the cliff, holding the cliff and saying, "Please forgive me, I cannot come that far. And I cannot stand with half my feet over the edge and just my toes on the rock. And I can see -- I have never seen such a deep valley.

It must be the very hell! Forgive me...."

The old man said, "Then what kind of archer are you? The real archery is not to hit the target; the real archery is that you should be unwavering. Your unwavering is the real qualification of being an archer. Then your target cannot be missed."

The old man came back, helped the young man to stand up -- he was perspiring, trembling, almost half dead -- and the old man said, "Why are you carrying this bow and these arrows? A perfect archer throws them away."

The young man said, "Again the same thing! I don't understand why a perfect archer should throw them away."

The old man said, "Look!" And he pointed towards the sky, where seven cranes were flying. The old man simply looked at those seven cranes, and they all fell on the ground.

He said, "If you are absolutely stable, absolutely unmovable, you become such a magnet that your eyes are enough; no arrows are needed. How many cranes could you have brought to the earth?"

The young man said, "Of course by one arrow, one. And by that time the others would have gone far away."

The old man said, "You are just a learner. You have not even found a master who can initiate you. So my suggestion is, go back, and unless and until you have forgotten what archery is... I will send my son to check you and if he can certify you, you can go to the emperor."

He said, "Strange, I have got into such a mess! With great effort I have learnt archery -- but certainly I am not that kind of archer whose eyes become arrows, whose absolute immobility becomes a magnet." But he touched the feet of the old man. He was certainly unique. He knew he was no comparison to him.

He went back. The man had said, "Try to remain unmoving..." That's a way of meditation: no movement of thoughts... utter stillness.

After twelve years the old man's son came. He said, "My father is dead, but he has left this message with me. I waited for twelve years before I came, because to be perfect in anything is not easy." And then he suddenly said, "What is that thing that is hanging on your wall?" It was his bow.

He said, "I somehow remember, it was something known to me. But these twelve years, just meditating, just remaining unmoving... You have to forgive me, I have forgotten what it is."

The young man said, "That's enough! This is the certificate the old man has left for you.

Now you can go to the emperor and be the champion."

But he said, "Now who wants to be the champion?" He tore up the certificate and threw it away.

Chuang Tzu has told many beautiful stories unparalleled in the whole world, stories not without great spiritual significance.

When a musician, Milarepa, starts shifting his attention from sounds to silence, his music becomes almost perfect; when he starts listening only to the silence and forgets all about sounds, his music is perfect. And to show the perfection he throws away his instruments; they are a kind of disturbance... the most beautiful disturbance in silence -- but a disturbance is a disturbance.

Music comes next to silence, but the difference is very big. And it is not that all music necessarily comes close to it. In the name of music, contemporary idiots are doing something which goes even farther away from silence -- from Beatles to jazz to Talking Heads. It is not music; it is simply making noise! It is simply disturbing the silence.

In the East, music has been always accepted as a spiritual phenomenon. If your music cannot create silence in the people who are listening, it is not music. If your music does not become an unmoving no-mind in the people of your audience, it is not music. It is just making noise.

It happened in Lucknow, in the time of one of the very colorful kings of Lucknow, Nawab Vazid Ali Shah. He was really a very incomparable man. When the British armies were entering to capture Lucknow, he was listening to music. Somebody told him that the enemies had entered Lucknow, and he said, "Welcome them. They are guests, we are the host. Make places for them. We have so many places... make arrangements for them."

The servant said, "But they have come to conquer."

He said, "There is no problem. They can conquer, but first let them rest. What is the hurry? Conquering is not going to be a difficult problem because we are not going to fight. We are human beings, and it does not matter... if they enjoy ruling, they can rule."

And he told the musicians, "Go on!"

This was the kind of man who was interested in a musician in Varanasi. He was thought to be the greatest musician of those days, but his conditions were so strange that nobody would even invite him to play his music. Vajid Ali Shah invited him.

People tried to prevent him. Friends, courtiers, wives, everybody said, "What are you doing? That man is mad. He is a great musician, but he is certainly mad."

He said, "It does not matter. If music cannot cure madness, then he is not a musician; and if music cannot create a divine madness, then too he is not a musician. Let him come."

The musician came and said, "My condition is that while I am playing nobody should move. If anybody moves his head, or anything, his head has to be cut immediately. All around the listeners swordsmen with naked swords should be standing watching, and if anybody moves -- finish!"

Lucknow was one of the most juicy places in India in those days. It has still some remnants of that juice.... Knowing the conditions -- because the conditions were also declared to the whole town -- ten thousand people came to listen. Even the musician could not believe that ten thousand people are ready to risk their life to listen to the music. When the music ended in the middle of the night the officers had noted down almost two dozen people who had moved their head in appreciation, despite knowing the condition. Vajid Ali Shah said, "What do you say, should we behead them?"

He said, "No! Everybody now should be allowed to go, and I will sing for those twenty- four -- they are the real lovers. They moved their heads, they could not help it. They started swaying with the music, they became one with it. All the others were cowards, sitting like statues."

Those twenty-four people were retained, and everybody was allowed to go. People were afraid -- perhaps they would be murdered. But in the morning they found them coming back home. They said, "What happened?"

Those people said, "That musician knows how to find the right audience. The real music began when you had all left. He is certainly the greatest musician. We are feeling so pure and so fresh and so clean as we have never felt in our life. He has managed to initiate us into meditation."

Milarepa, music is certainly next to meditation. But not the modern music, which is ugly, which is sexual, which draws you lower rather than taking you upwards. It does not give you more consciousness, higher skies to fly in; it brings you down, back to deeper gutters.

The real musicians will not accept this nonsense that goes on in the name of music. But young people who know nothing about music, who know nothing about meditation, who know nothing about silence, become fans, and they are mad about these idiots who think they are playing music. In any other wiser generation they would have been kept in psychiatric hospitals to be cured. They have gone berserk!

A violinist was convinced he could use his art in music to tame wild animals. So, violin in hand, he traveled to the heart of the African jungle to prove it. He had no sooner begun to play than the jungle clearing was filled with animals of all kinds. Birds, lions, hippos, elephants all stood round, entranced by his beautiful music.

Just then a crocodile crawled out of the nearby river and into the clearing and -- snap! -- gobbled up the violinist. The other animals were extremely angry. "You idiot! What on earth did you do that for?" they demanded. "We were enjoying that."

The crocodile put his hand on his ear and said, "What?"

Music can be understood only by those who have a musical ear. And those who have a musical ear should think themselves fortunate because beyond music, just one step more, they enter the world of meditation, silence.

Silence is the ultimate music.

Question 3:

Milarepa, this is the moment I have been living for: to share with you the miracle that has happened to me. I try in every possible way to make a way towards your heart. Slowly, slowly people are getting the clarity and the insight and the heartfulness.

Temples are not made of bricks and stones.

Temples are made of dancing hearts -- I mean real temples.

I know this is not only your situation. There are many who will share your question as their own. But living in this insane world... You can understand my difficulty.

I wanted it to happen all over the world, but those insane people are against themselves; they are completely closed. They are open to any kind of stupidity, but they are not open to sanity. They are ready to do everything for destruction, but they are not ready to make this small life a life of pure joy and dance -- and that was my whole effort.

But the people for whom I wanted it to happen and for whom I worked my whole life are the people who would like to kill me. Now twenty-one countries are closed for me. It has never happened before. It is unprecedented that without any reason...

I have never been in those countries, I have not even applied for a visa to enter in those countries. But they have taken precautions. Their parliaments have passed laws that not only can I not enter in their countries, even my jet-plane cannot land on their airports, just for fueling, because my presence can create immorality, anti-traditional revolution, unorthodox ideas.

In short, every country's parliament has said that I can corrupt the young people of their country; hence, as a precaution, the law was passed -- unanimously. Have I corrupted you? Have I destroyed your consciousness? Have I destroyed your love? Have I destroyed your gratitude towards existence?

But it seems idiots have always been in power. And those idiots are almost the same as the "deaf crocodile": they can't understand music, they can't understand love, they can't understand beauty, they can't understand art, they can't understand meditation -- but they pretend that they are the most intelligent people in the world because they have the power.

Power does not make you intelligent. In fact, it is absolutely wrong that I can corrupt people. It is a well known fact that power corrupts people -- and I don't have any power.

They have all the power. The people in all these parliaments are already corrupted, and they are going beyond the limits of any conceivable intelligence.

How can I corrupt just in fifteen minutes re-fueling my airplane on their so-called international airports? These are not international airports...! And if I can corrupt their country sitting in my airplane, I can corrupt from here perfectly well! And I will do everything I can to corrupt, because my corruption is against all that is ugly, all that is brutal, all that is violent, all that is oriented towards war.

I will corrupt these people, and their minds.

I would like them to be more loving, to be more friendly, to be more open, to be more available, to be more sharing of their joy and song and dance.

It is a strange world. German sannyasins had applied just for a three-week visa for me.

Germany has the greatest number of sannyasins in the world, the most flourishing discos, restaurants, meditation centers -- and the government is simply being cowardly, impotent.

And these are the descendants of Adolf Hitler! Even in his grave he will be feeling ashamed of these idiots.

The same day that I was refused and the parliament passed an order that I cannot enter, they allowed a terrorist conference, an international conference in Berlin. These people are murderers. These people are doing all kinds of harassment -- destroying property, hijacking airplanes, throwing bombs on innocent people. But their international conference is not a problem at all, because they fit with the politicians.

I am a trouble -- a single individual, with no weapons -- because I don't fit with their insane ideologies. And they are aware that if people try to understand me, they are going to leave their fold.

But it is your responsibility now. You are here from all over the world. When you go back... they cannot prevent you in your own country. You have to spread the silence, the music, the beautitude of meditation, with all your heart in it, because now that seems to be the only way for me.

Governments are ordering newspapers, news media, that even my name should not be mentioned. And I can see... Just the last days the international exhibition of books in Moscow ended. We received information from Lani that our meditation has been the greatest success; no stall was so overcrowded. We could not manage: we had the biggest stall, but an average of one hundred people were continuously there the whole day, thousands came and went -- and other stalls were empty. But the newspapers have reported about all the stalls except ours: my name should not be mentioned.

The government officials have come to visit all the stalls except our stall, but the opinion of the people was totally different. An old man used to come every day in the morning; because he had no money, he would sit there and read as much as he could manage until closing time. And he said to Lani -- obviously asking her not to mention his name -- that Russia needs Rajneesh, not vodka!

Because people don't have private money they started stealing books, and I informed Lani to encourage them to steal! Three KGB agents were continuously present on the stall, watching carefully the people who are coming, and by the second day, even the KGB agents had become immensely polite and interested. They said, "This is a strange place. You people are allowing anybody to take anything."

I had told them, "Ignore it if you see somebody stealing because it hurts the person's dignity. Just don't see -- let him take! Let the books reach to the people. Just tell them to read it and pass it on; that is the price!

They confiscated all our tapes and videos, because first they must see what is in them.

After two days they released them and thousands of people had tears in their eyes: "We have been living for seventy years in absolute darkness; we don't know what is happening outside."

When Lani comes she is going to bring many beautiful stories. Even the president of the exhibition took her aside and asked her, looking at my beard and my pictures, "Is this man something like Leo Tolstoy in India? We have never heard about him."

The whole country has been kept under such concentration camp conditions that they don't know what has happened in the world since 1917, and now it is 1987... seventy years. Russia has lived in darkness -- utter darkness. Whatever the government wants them to know, they know.

It is now your responsibility, because they will not allow me anyway. And what they call their tradition, their religion, their ideology, is so hilarious....

Just a few months before I had been thrown out, deported from Greece, without being given any reason. They just told the Greek sannyasins, "The archbishop of the Greek orthodox church does not want him in the country, because he can destroy young people's minds. We cannot help. He has to leave, although his visa is still valid for fifteen days, and we don't have any legal right to cancel it unless he has committed some murder or some heinous crime. He has not even come out of the room...."

And just a few days before, one archbishop of the same orthodox church of Greece had been caught on the airport of Paris, hiding heroin in his religious paraphernalia -- a large amount of heroin. This is their religion...!

The pope runs a bank in the Vatican. The Vatican is an independent sovereign state -- although it is only eight square miles -- and the Italian government has issued a warrant against the manager of the bank, because the bank is doing only one thing: it is turning all Italian mafia money into white money. That is its only source of income. Otherwise from where...?

The pope goes on getting the money and wasting it. Now he is going for a tour to America; estimated expenses will be twenty million dollars. When he went to Australia his expenses were more than Queen Elizabeth, who had visited just before him. All this money is heroin money.

Now rather than allowing the Italian government to arrest the man... they cannot enter into another country; they have to wait for whenever the manager comes out. The manager was only a bishop, but the pope has raised him into an archbishop, because he has been doing such good work!

These people have to be fought by you.

You have to take my heart with you.

You are not to be a missionary.

You have to be a message.

We don't convert anybody. We simply want everybody to be himself, and we want to destroy all life-negative attitudes imposed on man, so all chains fall down -- and the dance will come on its own.

I preach life, I preach love. I preach music, I preach silence. To me these are the constituents of an authentic religiousness. All else is simply bullshit, holy bullshit!

Just to listen to your laughter...!

A magician performed brilliantly in the saloon of an ocean liner. On this ship there was a parrot who hated the magician. Every time the magician did a trick, the parrot would scream: "Phony, phony, take him away!"

One day the ship sank and both the parrot and the magician ended up on a life raft together. The first day passed; they said nothing. Two days passed; still they said nothing.

Finally the parrot could bear it no longer. He glared suspiciously at the magician and squawked: "Okay, wise guy, you and your tricks... what did you do with the ship?"

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here