The crescendo of the insanity of centuries

Question 1:

Devageet, I have told you that the woman has three ages. She never becomes old; it is only the man who becomes old.

The woman passes through childhood, through youth and, "How wonderful you are looking."

I think somebody has told you, "How wonderful you are looking." That has given you the wrong conception of "Since becoming old two days ago..."

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

From today you will be known as a philosopher....

Remember: Old age is when the candles cost more than the cake.

And also remember: Old age is when getting it up gets you down.

You have certainly entered into the age when people will call to you, "How wonderful you are looking."

The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.

I will try my best to be gentle with you because you must be dreaming: women never become old; it has never been heard of.

You are not aware of a very fundamental law: When you are up to your nose, keep your mouth shut.

And never forget that money can't buy happiness, but it can buy you the kind of misery you prefer.

In old age certainly one wants to be happy, but nothing can buy happiness. In old age people have money, but money can buy only the misery you prefer, not happiness.

So I think, Devageet, it is better still to wait. Two days is not a long time, you can come back. It is dangerous to be old. Start falling in love with someone, and old age will disappear. That is one of the strategies to drop old age....

A man in love is incomplete -- that's true -- until he has married. Then he is finished.

So just don't get married. Always remain in love, and you will be young. The moment you are married then I cannot help.

The only thing to remember about women is: A man who moralizes is really a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably ugly.

Just avoid the moralizing women!

It is simply human to err -- and that's what you have done, fallen into a human error -- but the law is: To err is human, but to make a real mess of things you need a computer.

One who dares to be a fool should remember that that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.

You have the intrinsic capacity to become wise, but only two-day-old, not very old.

If you have really become old, you will come to know sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either.

Socialism is when the state owns everything; capitalism is when your wife does.

And this is a tremendously significant maxim to remember as far as old people are concerned: Whenever you feel the urge to exercise, just lie down and wait until it passes.

If you have really become old just have a look at your passport. If you actually look like your passport photo, you are not well enough to travel.

Devageet, you are perfectly young. Just to avoid women you are trying to play that you are old. That is not new. In my commune every sannyasin plays old. This is a very different world: outside men are chasing women; in my commune women chase men.

Outside women have headaches; in the commune men have headaches. They look so much worried and afraid that some woman is going to get them -- and most often the woman succeeds.

It is good that you understand that two days ago you became old. Remain old!

A big Yorkshire farmer found it necessary to go to London for several months and decided to leave one of his best workers in charge: "I want you to take care of things, Harry, as if I were here myself, understand?"

Harry nodded.

Four months later the boss farmer returned to find everything in shape. Harry, pointing things out said, "The chicks have been laying plenty of eggs, the wheat has grown double strong, the vegetables are better than they have ever been, and as for those monthly spells your daughter used to have, I have even got those stopped."

Devageet's old age is the same. Let him remain old but don't believe his old age. He can get anybody's monthly problem stopped. He is simply pretending to be old.

Question 2:

Premnath, your question is very significant, because in this world everybody is moving rightly except the nuts -- at least that's what the whole humanity believes.

The reality is just the contrary: the whole of humanity is a nutcase, and only a few nuts escape from this madhouse you call the world.

It happened once...

Kahlil Gibran's one friend became mad. He was a very great poet, thinker of a high caliber, a genius. When Kahlil Gibran heard he came back to Lebanon. He was born in Lebanon, he was brought up in Lebanon, he was a Lebanese. But then he went to America and he spent his whole life in America.

Hearing about his friend in Lebanon he came back to see him; he went to the madhouse.

His friend was sitting alone in the park of the madhouse on a bench. He looked at Kahlil Gibran but did not pay much attention, did not even show that he has recognized him.

Kahlil Gibran said, "Don't you recognize me?"

He said, "I recognize everybody. But what are you doing here? With great difficulty I have been able to leave that mad world and enter into this peaceful place. What are you doing here?"

And Kahlil Gibran writes in his diary, "It shocked me, but he was making a very significant point. He was saying that only the madhouse seems to be sane, and outside the madhouse everybody is insane."

At least in the madhouse nobody worries, nobody is ambitious to become a president or a prime minister, nobody is concerned to become the richest man, nobody has any ambition. People are enjoying moment-to-moment life. You may not like their way of doing it, you may not like their way of enjoying it, but that is your problem not their problem. In the madhouse nobody has any problem except the doctors who are running here and there worried and concerned. The mad people don't have any worry in the world; they are just at ease as they are. They are in a tremendous acceptability.

It happened in one madhouse...

The old doctor retired and a new doctor came. So there was a farewell party and a welcome party also for the new doctor. The old doctor who was retiring spoke first.

There was not a single clap. Nobody laughed, nobody seemed even to hear him or what he was talking about. There was utter silence as if there was nobody present. And when the new doctor stood up people clapped, enjoyed, a few people started dancing...

The new doctor said, "This is strange. The old doctor who has served them his whole life is retiring, and they remain completely silent; they did not even clap once."

So when the meeting was over he asked a madman, "What is the matter? Why did you misbehave with the old man? You clapped for me and you don't know me at all."

They all said, "The reality is, you look just like one of us. We were so happy to find you.

That man was a problem. He was continuously worried -- and here nobody is worried; things are running very smoothly."

No war, no murder, no suicide -- and it is one of the strangest things that mad people rarely fall sick. If they are sick they become healthy. Mad people are healthy people, because all the problems that can create mental tension and can affect your body are no longer there. Their bodies are natural, and they become innocent like children.

The new doctor was very much shocked when he heard the real reason for their clapping and joyous shouts and why a few started dancing. When he heard that they thought that he was one of them, he looked a little crazy.

In fact, one of the great psychologists, Adler, has created a psychology around will to power. And one day he was in his class. He said to his disciples who he was preparing for the new psychology, "The people who become teachers are the people who want to dominate others, and that is the easiest way to dominate; small children cannot do anything much about it. The people who become politicians suffer from inferiority complex. To hide that they try to magnify their ego as much as they can -- until it bursts."

And he was explaining about every kind of profession -- why people choose a certain profession. One young man stood up and he said, "You have left one profession out completely, the profession of the psychologist."

Adler was silent. He could not answer because the answer was clear. The student said, "Perhaps you cannot say it, but I will have to say to complete the list. The people who tend to become psychologists are people who are psychologically sick."

In fact, neurotics, psychotics, all kinds of nuts, enter into the world of psychology. That is the most beautiful hiding place they can find. They become experts about madness, but deep down they are mad people. I have studied the lives of psychologists and I have been really surprised that these people should have been in madhouses. They are treating mad people, and they are the most highly paid profession in the world.

You are asking, "Am I moving rightly or am I just a hopeless nutcase?" Everybody is a nutcase but nobody is hopeless. The world has unfortunately been growing for thousands of years in such a way that it has turned everybody into a nutcase. There are two kinds of nuts: normal and abnormal.

The normal nuts run the whole world. They are doctors, they are professors, they are engineers; deep down the madness is there, but within limits. Everybody is on the boundary line. Just a small incident, a small accident, and they can go beyond the boundary line: the wife dies, the business goes bankrupt -- anything can happen and the boundary line can be crossed, they immediately become nutcases.

The psychologists of the whole world are only trying to do one thing: to make abnormal nuts normal, somehow to bring them back within the boundary line. It does not help the nutcases, but it helps the world to go on running in its common way.

But why has it happened that so many people in the world are either mad or just on the boundary line? There is not any qualitative difference, but only a quantitative difference, a difference of degrees. We have been brought up with mother's milk, with all kinds of superstitions; they have gone deep into our unconscious.

I used to live in a city for a few months. Just in front of me there was a municipal water tap. And the man had the idea that while he was filling his pot with the water, if a woman passed by, that water had become dirty. He would immediately throw the water and he would start filling it again.

One day I was watching. "What is the matter?" I asked the man. He said, "According to my religion women are -- even their shadow is dirty, and I cannot drink dirty water."

I managed to find a woman and paid her so that I could tell her, "Tomorrow you go on walking and let us see how long his religion lasts."

But that man was also a man of great courage, because the whole day... The woman got tired, but I was paying her so she managed to continue. She went away for some time to eat; she sent her daughter to replace... The evening came but the man continued to throw away the water because the woman had come.

Finally it was too much. He threw the pot and came directly to me, because he understood what was happening. And he said, "You will drive me crazy!"

I said, "You are crazy. Nobody can drive you crazy. The very idea you are carrying that even the shadow of the woman makes things dirty... You are born of a woman, so you are dirty. For nine months you have been within the womb of a woman, and you have not even thought for a single moment what kind of a stupid idea you are carrying. Nobody can drive you crazy. I am trying to drive you sane. So remember, from tomorrow this superstition is not going to happen again; otherwise... I get paid enough, and I am alone -- I will keep a woman constantly on duty so that whenever you are on the tap she has just to walk there. Or she can just stand there, why walk?"

The man said, "Then something will have to be done."

And he did; he changed neighborhood. That very night he escaped from the neighborhood. I tried to find where he had gone. I was in search, but the city was big.

Somebody who knew him told me, "Don't waste your time. He has left the city itself because he knows you will not leave him easily; wherever he goes, you can appoint a woman to walk... And without the water he cannot cook his food, he cannot eat his food, he cannot drink water. You were killing him."

But he was not thought mad, because in the neighborhood in which he was living everybody had that superstition. He was just poor; others had their own running water.

That poor man did not have his own bathroom, his own running water, so he was using the corporation water. But they all believed that he was right, I was wrong.

That's why I should disturb people's religions -- these are religions. If you just watch what kind of religions people have been brought up in, you will be surprised that they have turned the whole humanity into an insanity.

I had once a friend who was a professor, and I have been his student also. For my postgraduate studies I was his student, and then when I also became a professor in the same university we became colleagues. But our friendship was old, since my student days. He had the idea that to see a woman is the greatest sin. Now he was a well-qualified professor.... He used to walk with his umbrella covering his eyes, so that he could see only two or three feet ahead. And he used to run so fast -- his bungalow and the department were not very far apart. With his umbrella touching his head he would run almost to his house and lock his house from inside.

In the class I was the only male; there were two female students. There were only three persons in his class. He could not look at women; it was against his religion which believed that celibacy is the foundation of religion.

So he used to teach with closed eyes. Seeing him teach with closed eyes, I thought this was a good opportunity to have a good sleep. So I was also sitting with closed eyes.

Those two girls wondered... and they felt strange also: the teacher is asleep -- with closed eyes he is speaking; the only male student is listening with closed eyes....

The professor thought that I must be following the same ideology of celibacy. He was very happy, because in the university he was laughed at. Now at least there were two persons belonging to the same idea. He took me aside one day and he said, "You are doing it perfectly well. But how do you manage on the road? -- because I don't see you carrying the umbrella."

I said, "To tell you the truth I don't belong to your madness. I'm simply sleeping; this is my time to sleep. My whole life I have slept from twelve to two without any exception."

Even in school I used to disappear for those two hours. In the university I used to disappear, and when I became a professor I asked the vice-chancellor, "These two hours are absolutely sacred to me. You can give me periods before or after, but these two hours you cannot touch."

He said, "What is the matter?"

I said, "The matter is that these two hours are devoted to sleep. If you give me a period I will sleep -- and I will tell all the students to fall asleep, to just keep quiet and silent and enjoy."

So he gave me periods after two o'clock.

I told the professor -- Bhattacharya was his name -- "You are under a wrong impression. I don't believe in such idiotic ideas, because with your closed eyes you are seeing the woman more. What are you seeing with your eyes closed? And in fact, why have you closed the eyes? You must have seen the woman first, then only can you close your eyes.

And if in seeing a woman your celibacy is disturbed, it is not much of a celibacy. What will you do in a dream?"

He said, "You are right. In a dream I cannot do anything. Neither is the umbrella there...

and the eyes are already closed -- the women are inside. Do you have any suggestion?"

I said, "Because of this umbrella and because of these closed eyes your dreams are disturbed by women. If you drop this idiotic discipline that you have imposed upon yourself... Women have their own business. Who is bothering to come into your dreams?"

He said, "No, my father followed the same ideology, my forefathers..." -- he was a brahmin from Bengal -- "and I cannot drop it, although I know the whole university thinks me mad."

But others have their own madness. It may be different, may not be detectable if everybody has it, but to be sane there is only one possibility and that comes out of meditation; otherwise, whatever you do is going to be insane because it will be coming out of your unconsciousness. You will not be doing it in your alertness, in your awareness.

According to me the madman is one who has fallen completely unconscious, who has lost even the thin layer of consciousness that you have. But even the thin layer of consciousness does not prevent you from behaving insanely.

You just watch yourself. Just watch your thoughts -- and you will be amazed what kind of thoughts go on in your mind. Watch your actions, what kind of actions you go on doing. Are they actions or are they only reactions?

A sane man behaves differently. A Gautam Buddha is surrounded by a crowd which is abusing him, using ugly words, obscene words, because he is against the organized religion of the Hindus and he is against the Hindu holy scriptures, the VEDAS. He has criticized them as hard as it is possible, and they need it. It is not that he is wrong. He has condemned the whole priesthood, that these are the exploiters, parasites. Naturally, brahmins were enraged.

And this was a brahmin village through which he was passing. And the brahmins surrounded him and said every kind of bad thing that they could manage. He listened silently. His disciples became angry, but because Buddha was present it was not courteous to say anything before the master. The master was standing so silent, and listening as if they are saying very sweet things.

Finally Buddha said to them, "If your things that you wanted to say to me are finished, I would like to reach to the place where people must be waiting for me. But if your things are not finished, after a few days when I will be returning I will inform you. And I will have enough time to listen to all that you want to say."

One man said, "Do you think we are saying something? We are condemning you. Do you understand or not? Because anybody else would become angry, and you are standing silently..."

The statement that Buddha made to these village people is immensely significant. He said, "You have come a little too late. If you had come ten years ago when I was as insane as you are, not a single person would have gone alive."

Ten years ago he was a prince, a warrior, one of the best archers of his time, a great swordsman, and those brahmins... he could simply have removed their heads with a single blow, without any difficulty. Because those brahmins know nothing about swords or arrows or being a warrior. He would have just cut them -- almost like vegetables.

He said, "You have come late. Ten years ago if you had come... but now I am no longer insane. I cannot react and I would like to ask you one question. In the last village people came with sweets and fruits and flowers to receive me, but we take food only one time a day, and we had already taken the food. And we don't carry things, so we had to tell them, 'You please forgive us, we cannot accept sweets, flowers. We accept your love, but these things you will have to take away.' I want to ask you," he said to this angry crowd, "what must they have done with their sweets and flowers that they had brought as presents to us."

One man said, "What is the problem in it? They must have distributed the sweets in the village."

Buddha said, "That makes me very sad. What will you do? -- because I don't accept what you have brought, just the same way as I did not accept the sweets and the flowers and other things that the people brought to me in the other village, if I don't accept your obscenity, your ugly words, your dirty words, if I don't accept, what can you do? What are you going to do with all this garbage that you have come with? You will have to take it back to your homes and give it to your wives, to your children, to your neighbors.

"You will have to distribute it, because I simply refuse to take it. And you cannot make me angry unless I accept your humiliation, your insult. Ten years ago I was not conscious; if somebody had insulted me he would have lost his life immediately. I had no idea that insulting me is his problem, and that I have nothing to do with it -- I can simply listen and go on my way."

This is what I call sanity. Do you think humanity is sane? It only appears... just superficial sanity, mannerism, etiquette, culture, civilization, just skin-deep. Scratch a little deeper and the barbarous comes out.

If you really want, Premnath, to be a sane being, sannyas is the way for sanity, for dropping all those unconscious layers of your mind which force you to behave unconsciously. And in your unconsciousness you are doing things for which you yourself will repent when you will become a little alert and aware, "What have I done?"

The insane person can only react. The sane person acts, the sane person responds -- he never reacts.

The way is simple and you are at the right place where your mind can become calm and quiet, so much so, as if it is absent. You should be certain of your sanity only if you can attain a state of no-mind. Only then can you be certain that nothing can drive you mad, because the mind that was possible to become insane is no more -- you have transcended it.

I am reminded of an old story...

Once there was an old couple who lived deep in the forest, and they never saw anybody else. One day the old husband was walking on a lonely path when he saw something shining on the ground. He bent down to pick it up and it was a mirror. But he had never seen a mirror before and when he saw his own face reflected in it, he thought it was his father's face. Obviously he had never seen his own face, but he had seen his father's face.

So he took it home and placed it up in the attic for safekeeping, and every evening he would go up and say good night to his father. But his wife became suspicious about what he was doing in the attic every evening. So one night she followed him. She saw him looking at the mirror and saying good night to it... but she had never seen a mirror before either! So she pushed over to him, grabbed the mirror out of his hand, looked into it and said, "You old idiot! You mean every night you come sneaking up here just to say good night to this ugly old woman?"

But this is how our mind functions. You don't know your original face -- and there is no mirror which can show you your original face. What you know as your face is only the face that you have seen reflected in the mirror; it is a reflection.

You must have seen in big cities or in exhibitions or in circuses, there are mirror halls where different kinds of mirrors are arranged: in some mirrors you become so tall, and in some mirrors you become such a pygmy; in some mirrors you become so fat, and in some mirrors you become so thin....

I don't think the mirror that you are using can be perfect. It is very difficult to have a perfect mirror. If by chance you have a mirror which makes your face look beautiful or ugly, then you will carry that idea with yourself.

But you don't know your original face, how it is, directly. It is only in the state of no- mind that you become aware of your originality, and that is the only sanity as far as I am concerned -- as far as any awakened human being has ever been concerned.

It is by going beyond the mind and entering into the no-mind that you will attain sanity; otherwise, Premnath, you will remain either a normal nutcase -- or if you are a little courageous, a little adventurous, you may go beyond the border, and you will be stamped a madman. And once you are stamped by the society as a madman you may come back to being normal, but nobody will ever think that you are normal.

I used to live with one of my father's sisters while I was in the college studying. The husband of my father's sister had a brother. He used to come just to chitchat with me, and I saw every possibility that he could go beyond the border; just a little push was needed.

So one day I was talking to him and I told him, "If you are really religious" -- and he was a very religious fanatic -- "then you should touch your wife's feet every night before you go to bed."

He said, "But where is it written?"

I said, "It is not written. Great principles remain unwritten, they are transferred from master to disciple."

But he said, "People will think that I am mad or something. Nobody touches the feet of his wife."

I said, "Every woman should be taken as your mother; only then you can be celibate."

He said, "That's right."

That night he went home. He touched the feet of his wife and the wife shrieked and the whole house gathered saying: "What are you doing?"

And he said, "Every woman is a mother."

They said, "That's right but that does not mean that you have to touch the feet of your wife. Don't be stupid!"

But he became stubborn -- he was a fanatic. He said, "I will touch... She is my wife, not yours -- and what is wrong in it? I am just paying my respect."

His other brothers came to me asking, "What kind of thing have you told him?"

I said, "I was just checking whether he could cross the line or not. I will pull him back.

Don't be worried."

But it was really difficult to pull him back. I had to convince him, "Just for society's sake... You have deep respect, you can touch your wife's feet when she is asleep in the night. Show your respect; it does not matter whether she is asleep or awake."

He said, "That's right. I am getting into trouble; everybody thinks I am mad."

He stopped touching the feet but everybody continued to think that he was a little cuckoo.

People had never thought that he was cuckoo before when he was doing the same things.

Now he is doing the same things and people are suspicious. Once a suspicion has entered, then it is very difficult to remove it from the mind of the society.

And in fact people enjoy it that you are mad and they are not mad. They provoke your madness once they know that you are vulnerable. Only one person is not vulnerable to any provocation: he who knows the secret of meditation.

A couple went to see a new movie, and the two seats in front of them were occupied by a man and his dog. When the film was over the dog applauded enthusiastically. The man behind leaned forward and said, "That's simply astonishing."

"Yes, it is," said the dog's companion, "Especially since he hated the book."

Just all around you, if you watch clearly, you will find all kinds of nuts....

The Queen of England was visiting The Royal Military Hospital, and insisted on making a round of the wards. She came into a room with three beds and asked the first soldier, "What is wrong with you?"

Embarrassed, the soldier replied, "Syphilis, Your Majesty."

Trying to appear natural, the Queen asked, "And what treatment do you get for it?"

"Wire brush and Dettol," the soldier replied.

"Is there anything you would like to make your stay more comfortable?" the Queen asked.

"No, Ma'am, I'm a soldier in the Queen's Own Regiment, and that's enough for me."

Deeply touched, the Queen moved on to the next bed, where the soldier lay on his stomach. "What is wrong with you, soldier?" she asked.

"Piles, Your Majesty," grunted the soldier.

"What is your treatment here?"

"Wire brush and Dettol, Ma'am."

Wincing the Queen asked if there was anything she could do to make him more comfortable. He answered that he was simply grateful to be a soldier in the Queen's Own Regiment, and that was more than enough.

The third soldier told her hoarsely that his problem was a sore throat.

"What is the treatment for that?" she asked.

"Wire brush and Dettol, Ma'am," came the reply.

"Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Next time I would like my treatment first."

It is such an insane world you have just to be watchful and alert and you will see ridiculous, hilarious things happening everywhere. It is unbelievable that sane people should do such things.

But remember: everybody is vulnerable. We are born in a wrong society, in a wrong world, with wrong conditions. And unless you are really interested to get rid of your past and past impacts, impressions on your mind, it is not going to leave you easily. The madness continues.

And as you grow your madness also continues to grow. It is not strange that after sixty, people start thinking you are senile; you have been always. Just now the senility has grown to a point where it is apparent. It cannot come suddenly from nowhere. It has been growing with you.

Nobody wants to talk to old people for the simple reason that they are irritable, annoyed easily, expect too much, and to you they look a little insane. Perhaps their mind is tired; not only are they retired, their sanity also is retired.

Three old men were sitting on a bench in a public park. One was seventy-five, the second was eighty and the third was ninety. They used to meet there every evening. The whole day they waited for the evening, because they were the only friends. Everybody else was far below their age. And there was such a generation gap that there was no question of making friends with anybody else.

All the three persons were retired, but that evening the first seventy-five-year-old man was looking very sad, ashamed. The second old man asked, "What is the matter with you? Why are you so sad, so ashamed? What have you done?"

He said, "Don't ask. A beautiful lady was taking a bath -- she was a guest in our house, and I was peeping from the keyhole and my mother caught me red-handed. It is so shameful."

Both the other old men looked at each other and laughed, and they said, "Don't be stupid, everybody does such things in childhood, everybody gets caught. There is no need to feel so ashamed about something that happened in childhood."

He said, "What are you saying? It happened this morning! And I don't know how I am going to go back home. I wanted to die at that very moment."

The second man said, "I can understand your problem. I have also my problems. They are bigger than yours. It is now the seventh day that I have not made love to my wife. The moment I say, 'What about it?' she simply turns to the other side and says, 'I have such a headache and I am so tired. Just go to sleep.'" The third old man laughed and said to the first old man, "Just ask him what kind of love he makes to his wife."

And he asked, "What kind of love do you make?"

He said, "Love? I take her hand into my hand and press it three times. And then we say good night and go to sleep. What more can I do at this age?"

The oldest said, "Your problems are childish, stupid. I am facing the real problem. This morning my wife slapped me, and I said, 'Why are you slapping me?' She said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I'm preparing to make love.' She said, 'You idiot, neither do you sleep the whole night nor do you let me sleep. This is the third time you are making love.' So I think I'm losing my memory."

Just watch people....

If you are alert and silent and sane you will be simply surprised what goes on happening all around.

My whole effort here is to create a commune of people who are completely free from past conditions, fanatic religions, fascist political ideologies, and who start responding to life out of silence and peace, awareness, consciousness, not through a mind which has no eyes. It is blind. It reacts immediately like any mechanism. But it has no eyes to see directly and deeply into any problem.

Even the greatest people that you know in the world behave very childishly, and they are creating millions of problems for other people because they have power. The whole power is in insane hands; not a single powerful man in the world is even interested in meditation -- and except meditation there is no way out. We are really coming to the crescendo of the insanity of centuries.

In all of our lifetimes we are going to see the ultimate madness exploding by the time this century comes to an end -- and it is not long. It is now nineteen eighty-seven; the year two thousand is less than thirteen years away. In these thirteen years things will go on becoming more and more insane.

Just the other day I received a letter from Oregon, from a doctor, a dental surgeon, "I am very ashamed by the way the American government treated you and the commune. You had brought a new colorfulness to the state of Oregon. Rather than rejoicing in that colorfulness, they destroyed the whole commune."

Many intelligent people in America feel the same way, but the old problem -- those intelligent people feel but they remain silent, because they know the majority is absolutely insane. They are so insane that they destroyed the commune illegally, they imposed crimes on me of which I have not even dreamt.

They blackmailed me through my attorneys, because they made my attorneys afraid that if they were going to insist on trial, then my life might be at risk because the American government would not like to be defeated by a single individual: "You know and we know that we don't have any evidence, so your victory is certain. But remember, your victory would mean the assassination of Osho."

It was made so clear by the government attorneys to my attorneys, that they came to me and said, "We have never seen such a thing happening. It is absolutely insane, absolutely illegal, criminal. Now they want you to accept any two crimes, the smallest crimes, but accept that you are guilty of two crimes so that they can save the face of America and American democracy and American justice. And once you have accepted two crimes then there will be no trial and you will be freed."

I was very stubborn. I told my attorney, "It is better to fight the case because they don't have any evidence and they cannot have any evidence."

But the attorney said, "The question is of blackmail. They are threatening us that they will withdraw the bail and they will put you in jail. And they can go on postponing the case for ten years, fifteen years, and in these ten or fifteen years they will harass you, torture you. And we are afraid they may even take your life, because they have made one thing clear, that the government is not ready to be defeated by a single individual."

With tears in their eyes they begged me, "Don't insist on a fight. We know that you have not committed any crime, and they know it. And we had not gone to negotiate with them; they came to us to negotiate."

This is very strange -- that the government should come to the criminal to negotiate... for what? If I have committed the crime I should be punished. What negotiations? Is it a business?

But the reason was clear: they knew they could not prove anything against me. And the Attorney General of America later on accepted -- when I had left America -- that I had not committed any crime; they didn't have any proof, any evidence, any witness. But you will not believe that even knowing this, they blackmailed my attorneys. They cried and I had to accept, because they told me, "It is absolutely futile. It is hitting your head against the wall for no meaning. It will destroy your whole movement, it will destroy all your sannyasins, and you will leave millions of people who love you. It is better to accept two crimes."

I said, "I am not a serious man. I can accept all of their thirty-four crimes. There is no problem, but don't ask for any proof, because I don't have any evidence either."

They said, "No, nobody is going to ask for evidence."

And what happened? As I accepted two crimes the judge immediately ruled that I am punished with four hundred thousand dollars -- that is nearabout sixty lakh rupees -- for two crimes which I have not committed, which they have forced in a blackmail way threatening my attorneys that my life is at risk, "just to save my life!" But they never mentioned that once I accepted then sixty lakh rupees will be the fine. They did not mention that. This was the second trick.

First they blackmailed, "This way there will be no trial and we will release Osho immediately." But with the judgment the judge came -- four hundred thousand dollars.

My people who were present in the court immediately collected that much money within ten minutes, because the attorneys were concerned to get me out of America as quickly as possible. And as I was coming out of the jail, immediately another summons for some other case that they had created in another court... They were waiting outside the jail to give me the summons.

As I was coming to the airport I received the news that they had put a bomb under my chair. They were waiting that if I didn't accept, and I wanted to go with the trial, then they would just explode the bomb and finish the whole thing, so there would be no person and no question of any trial.

Now that bomb cannot arrive inside the jail and under my chair without somebody who is not part of the government, who is not part of the high authorities of the jail... The jail had no interest in killing me. The idea must have come from Washington -- it must have come from Ronald Reagan.

These people who are in power are lying, blackmailing -- doing every kind of act that is inhuman. But perhaps they are doing it in their insanity, in their unconsciousness.

And there is no great movement in the world to counter the forces of violence, madness, except our movement for meditation.

The responsibility is great on each of you. Not only for your own sake, but for the sake of preventing the mad powers from destroying this beautiful planet -- this planet which has produced a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Zarathustra; this planet which has given birth to a Krishna, to a Mahavira, to a Lao Tzu. And these are just the beginnings of spring; there are higher possibilities in the future.

If man goes on living on the earth, we will be producing even higher peaks than we have produced in the past. Those high peaks in the past were produced in spite of all the hindrances of the society. If the society is supportive, we can create so many beautiful people around the world that it can turn from a desert into an oasis.

And that's what the dental surgeon reminded me of in his letter: "We miss you; you turned a desert into an oasis, and we feel ashamed that the American government did something absolutely wrong. You brought a message which could have saved not only America but the whole of humanity."

They are missing now because that small commune in Oregon had become suddenly more important than Washington itself. All the eyes from all over the world were concentrated on the commune: "What is happening there? Why are people so happy?

Why are people so loving? Why is there no fighting? Why is there no murder? Why is there no suicide? What has happened to those people? Their jealousies, their conflicts seem to have disappeared, they have entered, it seems, into a new state of consciousness."

But as far as I am concerned I have no complaint against anybody. My own feeling is it was good that they destroyed the commune. It helped my people to spread all over the world. And wherever my one sannyasin is, he will create the right atmosphere. And a few people are bound to gather around him to create small communes all over the world.

Now I'm not interested in creating a big commune, because any big commune is going to be destroyed by the power that is any government. It does not matter whether it is the Indian government or the American government. If I create a big commune again, which is possible now... The moment you have a power, although your power is of love and peace and silence, the powerful people in New Delhi will start getting disturbed.

I don't want to repeat history.

Only idiots repeat history.

So my new idea is that we will not create a big commune that unnecessarily comes into conflict with the powers. We will create small communes all around the earth so nobody will be worried, because a few people cannot be dangerous to the vested interests, but those few people can make the whole world afire with love, with peace, with silence, with blissfulness.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation