The Future Is Always Open

[NOTE: This discourse is published in the book: The Last Testament, Volume 1, as Chapter 27.]

ANSWER: You can see it already happening. It needs guts to be my red people, and Holland is one of the countries which has existed all through history with tremendous struggle, because the earth level is low and the sea level is higher.

Holland has been continuously fighting against the ocean, and it has given a certain strength to the people. Only those who have strength to stand with me can belong to the red commune around the world.

Holland is certainly going to be my country. My people are continuously growing in Holland.

You will be surprised to know the fact that when the theosophical movement decided to declare J. Krishnamurti as the world teacher, Holland was the country chosen for the declaration. Six thousand topmost leaders of the Theosophical Society had gathered there in Holland.

Out of all the countries, why Holland? There is something very essential that the Dutch people have grown within them; just somebody needs to trigger it. J.

Krishnamurti chickened out, could not take that great responsibility. I can take any responsibility without any problem, because basically I am an irresponsible man -- it does not matter.

But the Dutch people have grown something in them down the centuries which can have a synchronicity with me; the same with the German people. Germany cannot remain without becoming red, because they have been through two wars which would have destroyed anybody forever; but if you go to Germany now, you cannot believe that this country has survived two world wars -- not only survived, but is now the richest country in Europe. They have some guts.

I cannot say the same about the French. They are simply lousy. There is no possibility for France. It is doomed; it has no spiritual corner in its being. Yes, a few French people will be coming, those who have still the soul alive in them.

But about the whole country this cannot be said. Every country grows in different ways on different lines and gathers a different kind of energy. One of the reasons why Gurdjieff failed and could not help humanity was that he chose France to be his headquarters. Germany would have been of much significance, Holland would have been better, but not France.

France has become satisfied with women and wine. It has no aspirations for something beyond the horizon. It is very limited in its vision and very closed too, because it is a very egoist country. France thinks itself to be the most superior country in the world. Their language is the most superior, their philosophy is the most superior, their paintings are the most superior. These are just ornaments for the ego, and the more a country is surrounded by egoistic projections, the less is the possibility of its transformation.

On the other hand, Germany has given birth to the biggest genuises in philosophy, in theology has produced the greatest mystics, but it has no bragging about it. As I have felt people from almost all over the world, I can say certainly that it is hard to bring a German to transformation, hard because he will resist and fight; but if you go on persisting, the day he drops his resistance he is forever yours. Then there is no way back. Then he will never waver. You cannot say that about the American. You can predict that he is going to waver.

American history is only three hundred years old, and America is not an ancient race. It is not a race at all; it is a hodgepodge. The French are there, the English are there, the Spanish are there, the Portuguese are there, the Italians are there...

it is a marketplace. People don't have roots, and to have strength you need roots.

The deeper the roots go... yes, it is harder to change you, but once you are changed, it is almost impossible for you to fall back. Once a German is deprogrammed, nobody can reprogram him again. The American can be reprogrammed within two days and you can deprogram him again within two days. He has no roots.

In India, we have a certain creeper without roots. It simply lives as a parasite on other trees, from one tree to another tree. It spreads far -- sometimes miles, in the forest -- but it has no roots, it simply lives on those other trees.

Americans are simply like that creeper: they don't have any roots; they don't have anything to stand upon, their past is so small. That's why they cannot project about the future either, because this is the logical way: the longer the past, the longer you can project the future.

The third world war is just knocking on the doors. This century is going to end, and with the end of this century either we have the new man on the earth or no life at all. But Americans are fast asleep.

Many Americans have come to me. In almost twenty years, many have come, many have gone, very few have stayed. And those who have stayed are really not Americans. The American Jew has stayed with me, because he has no country; he has only his past, but a long past and of tremendous importance. He knows how to deal with people like Moses, Ezekiel, Jesus, Baal Shem.

And what does America know? Henry Ford, Rockefeller? -- they cannot have a deep intimacy with me.

Yes, a few Americans have remained with me. Mukta is sitting there, but she is not really American, she is Greek. The American generation is just changing continuously -- everything is a fashion. They can come to me also as part of a fashionable movement, but they are not going to remain here, because soon they get attracted to something else. They don't know how to grow roots.

And different countries have different ways. It is not a coincidence that forty percent of my people are Jews. And I have been hitting hard on Jews -- so much so that rabbis have started writing letters to me saying, "You seem to be anti- Jewish." They don't know that Jews are the majority of my people, and I can hit on them because I love them and they understand my love. In my hit, they receive my love.

Not a single Jew has left me. Once he has come, he has come forever, he has found his Israel in me. He need not go to Jerusalem, he need not bother about Moses and Jesus; there is no need. They have found a more contemporary Moses here.

Each country can be given a certain characteristic. For example, Indians: they pretend to be spiritualists, and that is the most materialistic country in the whole world, most greedy. They could not be with me for the simple reason that I was exposing them -- and unless I expose you totally, you cannot be reborn.

Indians started escaping from me the moment I started exposing them. They took the hint, and it was right: they are greedy, they are materialist; they don't have any longing for spirituality, only pretensions. Yes, once, twenty-five centuries ago, perhaps they were spiritual, and that idea of the past has followed them like a shadow. But they forget completely that for twenty-five centuries you cannot go on pretending that the shadow that is following you is alive. Indian spirituality is dead, and I don't see much hope for its revival.

But a few Indians have been with me all along, in all the seasons, in all the changes. So when I say something about a country, it does not apply to individuals. Now Avesh is sitting there -- a great Frenchman -- and he is going to sit there forever. I have destroyed his French-ship completely. Arup herself is Dutch. Can she conceive of ever leaving me? Not even in dreams; it is impossible. I can say that with certainty, because love is never uncertain.

England is so sad and depressed -- obviously: they were on the top, they had the biggest empire any country ever had.... It was said that the sun never sets in the British Empire, somewhere or other it is always rising. As far as the whole Empire was concerned, the sun was always rising somewhere; it never set in the British Empire. Neither Alexander, nor Napoleon, nor Hitler, nor Stalin has known such a vast empire. Nobody has been able to know such immense power, and suddenly all that has disappeared like writing on water. It is natural that they will be so depressed, sad. They would not like to come out of their depression. They cannot accept laughing, dancing, singing. They have lost so

much, and you are thinking to dance? They have lost everything, and you are proposing, "Let us sing a beautiful song!"

England will find it more difficult than anybody else to be with me. But that does not apply to individuals, let me remind you again. Teertha is there... the moment he entered my room, many years ago, not for a single moment has he left, not even to visit England again. He has dropped his wife, he has dropped his parents, he has dropped everything. He was a well-known encounter leader, he had the best growth institute in Europe; but once he looked into my eyes, all that was finished. I knew it, he knew it -- that he was bound that day and a new life began which had nothing to do with the past.

Individuals will be coming from everywhere, but a few countries have more potential. For example, it is very difficult to get into the Mohammedan countries -- almost impossible, because they are still so uncivilized. Civilization has not happened anywhere, but there are countries which are a little less uncivilized and there are countries which are more uncivilized. Civilization is still waiting to happen. It is waiting to happen for you: you are to become the heralds of civilization.

But Mohammedan countries are not even contemporaries. They have not moved a single inch from the times of Mohammed. Fourteen centuries have passed and they are still thinking that the Koran is the holy book. In the Koran ninety-nine percent is just nonsense. One percent you can manage to give some spiritual meaning, with great effort, otherwise it is not of any importance. And Mohammedans have remained faithful to the Koran. They are not ready even to listen to anybody.

A few Mohammedans are my sannyasins, but those poor people ask me, "Bhagwan, we want to be sannyasins, we want to be contemporaries, we want to have the revolution that you are giving us, but we cannot go in red clothes back home. They will simply kill... they don't argue."

Mohammedans don't know argument. They don't know any philosophy. Their only argument is the sword: either kill them, or be killed by them; whosoever is killed was wrong. That is strange. It is very easy to kill Socrates, any idiot like Muhammad Ali can kill Socrates without any difficulty. Socrates is not a wrestler, he is not a boxer; just a good punch on his nose and he will be finished with all his philosophy. Physical strength or strength that comes through weapons cannot be a substitute for argument. Argument needs intelligence, and that intelligence is missing there.

In India, I had come in contact with hundreds of Mohammedans. You may not know that India is still the biggest Mohammedan country in the world as far as numbers are concerned, even after the division with Pakistan. When Pakistan and Bangladesh were one with India, of course, half the population of Mohammedans was in India. But even after Pakistan was separated, Bangladesh got separated, still India had a larger Mohammedan population than any other

country. Countries which are completely Mohammedan -- even they are far behind.

These Mohammedans in India are a little better than any Mohammedans in any other country because for centuries they have been living with all kinds of philosophers, all kinds of religions, all kinds of attitudes, approaches. Obviously their fanaticism has become less, but even that fanaticism is enough to kill you.

You cannot say anything against one holy book -- and that is Koran; one God -- and that is that of Islam; and one prophet -- and that is Mohammed. In these three statements, the whole Mohammedanism is complete. You cannot speak against any of these three... and there is so much to say against all these three.

The Mohammedan God does not look like a God at all, their holy book is just rubbish, and their one and only one prophet is just an uneducated, uncultured man, with no idea of philosophical heights, with no knowledge of anything, who has never meditated in his life. He knows nothing about meditation.

But the sannyasins who are Mohammedans have asked me, "Give us permission.... We will keep the mala hidden in our houses, we will keep the robe hidden in our houses, we cannot even let our family know about it because that will be just the end. And if you want," they have told me, "that we should be killed, we are ready."

Now, I am not a fanatic about the color of the dress or the mala. I said, "Don't be worried about it. I need your heart, and if that has become red.... I need to be within you. If I have reached there, then don't be worried. And I don't want anybody to be killed in my name, I want people to live longer, healthier, happier in my name."

Mohammed says to Mohammedans, "If you die in my name, your paradise is certain." I say to you, "If you live in my name and love in my name and dance in my name, you are already in paradise." I don't guarantee anything about the future, how can I tell anybody to die in my name?

The earth is so small and it is divided in so many different groups who have grown differently, had different histories -- and their past is significant, that has to be taken into account. So, whenever I have said anything about Holland, or Germany, or England, I was simply indicating the possibility.

I have so many Italians -- but not reliable; well greased and slippery! They try hard, nice people, but what can they do about their greasiness? Some thing in them is always slippery. Many Italians have come to me, very few have stayed.

Those who have stayed have changed a lot, but still something of greasiness is there. Now they are not going to slip back, but the possibility remains... they are not absolutely out of it.

But if we can get the right people, the people who are not that ripe may start following them. That's how the human mind functions; it is imitative. If we have enough red people around the earth, then more and more Italians will slip into being red people. Slipperiness has no direction, you just have to give them the right place from where to slip.

And if we can create a rejoicing around the world, how long can England remain depressed? Nobody wants to be depressed. How long can they go on singing "God Save the King"? And what about them? God only saves the queen or the king? -- what about the people? God has not been in favor of the people.

Those people are waiting for something to happen in the world that can drag them out of their gloominess, their depressiveness, and can make them free, free of the glory that they had of the empire, which they are missing.

We can give them a new glory which nobody can take away from them. That glory that they had was really ugly: exploiting people, poor people all around the world -- and your whole joy was dependent on these starving people, and you went on exploiting them. If you are sad and depressed today, it is the consequence of your own actions. You have made millions of people sad, depressed, you have killed millions of people around the world to save the empire; now who is going to suffer the consequences?

England is now a dark hole. That does not mean that people want to live in that dark hole, but we have to make an effort to reach into their darkness with our torches, we have to throw ropes into that dark hole. Somebody is bound to catch hold of the rope and we can pull him out. And it is a question only of a few people starting moving, and others may follow.

So in every country we have to work in a different way, seeing the country's characteristic. Now we have communes all around the world. Every commune has to understand what kind of people you are surrounded with, and what can be done so that they can be pulled within you. It is simple arithmetic.

Q: BHAGWAN, WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT WERNER ERHARD, THE BUSINESSMAN WHO DISCOVERED THAT PERSONAL GROWTH SELLS BETTER THAN ENCYCLOPEDIAS, YOU SAID THAT THE BUSINESS OF GROWTH IS JUST AN AMERICAN NAME FOR GOD.

THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER CHRONICLE, REPORTING THIS, NOTED THAT YOU DID NOT COMMENT ON THE PERSONAL GROWTH MARKETING OF YOUR OWN RAJNEESH INTERNATIONAL MEDITATION UNIVERSITY HERE. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE AND WHAT PART DOES THE UNIVERSITY PLAY IN THE LIFE OF THE COMMUNE?

A: The difference is great. He was a door-to-door salesman of encyclopedias. Our university is not going door-to-door to sell anything to anybody.

Our university is a well. Those who are thirsty can come and drink out of it. It is available, but we are not persuading anybody. On the contrary, I am making every effort to offend them, to make them angry, become our enemies. Do you think this is business tactics?

In business, the customer is always right. Here the situation is totally different:

the customer is always wrong. From whatsoever source he comes, he is always wrong -- and he comes on his own, in spite of all that I go on doing continuously

to prevent him from coming. Nobody in the whole world has offended so many people as I alone have done, singlehandedly.

But even after all this turmoil that I create, and offensiveness and antagonism in their minds, a few daring people come. These people can be relied upon. Just their coming is significant. Certainly, my university is not part of the marketplace.

Werner Erhard was part of the market world. He was taking his est from one hotel to another hotel around the country, then outside the country. And he was neither a philosophical man, nor religious; he had registered est as a corporation, a business corporation. He was paying income tax for all his incomes.

Our university is not a business. We don't have to pay any taxes for the university. The degrees that our university gives are of no use in the marketplace, because we don't want our degrees to be recognized by any government or by any university or any other institution. We refuse to be recognized by them, because just the fact that we let them recognize us means they are somebody higher than us, somebody more authoritative. We don't accept any government's recognition, because no government is worthy of it.

Our university is absolutely a free phenomenon. Those who want to come, come knowing that whatever we have to offer is of no use in the marketplace. In fact it may make their market world more difficult for them, because a person who comes here for three months or four months to do a course in the university... we are not giving him growth the way Werner Erhard was giving. He started from where you are.

Our work is first to destroy whosoever you are -- whosoever, without any condition. We destroy you first, dismantle you first, and unless we have deprogrammed you completely there is no growth possible. We don't teach you any growth. To be deprogrammed... you start growing on your own accord.

Werner Erhard was teaching you techniques of growth, but if you are a monster and you are being taught techniques of growth, you will become a bigger monster.

Werner Erhard never offended anybody. That's simply the way of the businessman: never offend anybody. Everybody was happy with him. The government was happy, the churches were happy, the politicians were happy -- not only in this country, but in other countries too. He used to go to India to pay respect to the so-called Hindu mahatmas. Muktananda was his guru. He even went to pay his respects to Morarji Desai, when he was the prime minister of India. And by mistake he even came to me, thinking I also belong to the same category of mahatmas that he has known all his life. He must have been shocked.

When he was sitting in front of me, I could see how difficult it was for him just to sit there. And when I told him he can ask anything, he simply said, "No, I don't have any questions." Laxmi had given him my latest books, just as a present. He went into the hotel -- which was not far away, just a few minutes walk -- and gave those books to one sannyasin, Hridaya, without even looking at them. Some

great fear must have arisen in him. Reading those books might disturb his mind.

And certainly I was not the person that he had expected. I would have destroyed his whole est first.

I have to begin from scratch. First I have to demolish the old building completely, I don't believe in renovation. Howsoever beautifully you renovate a building, it still remains the old rotten thing; just painted here and there, a little bit supported, but it is just the old rotten building that you have given a facelift.

No, it is better to live in an A-frame, but new, fresh, young.

Werner Erhard is a businessman, there are no two opinions about it. And nobody can compare me with Werner Erhard. Our whole approach is totally different.

Our approach is first to deprogram the person completely, and then leave him alone to himself. Don't give him another program. Leave him alone, empty, just a pure nothingness. And out of that nothingness grows everything that existence wanted to grow in that man.

We bring the person close to existence, from where he has been taken away.

Once we see that you are communing with existence, our work is finished. We don't give you growth, we simply take away all nonsense that is surrounding you and which perhaps you think is growth. Growth comes of its own accord, you just have to be utterly open and vulnerable.

I am not a businessman. I could have been and then I would have defeated all the businessmen in the whole world. But I have chosen to offend everybody, ready for their hostility from every nook and corner of the world.

A businessman tries to be respectable, and I have been trying my whole life to be notorious. Unless you understand me, you will not be able to see why I unnecessarily create hostility in people. I am not a businessman. I have nothing to sell to them. If they are courageous enough to come nearer to me, I am going to burn their whole personality. I'm going to take their whole skin off their body and then leave them alone so they can grow fresh from the very beginning.

That growth will not be in any way a credit to me. That growth will be a credit to the person who dared to come, who dared to pass through the fire, who dared to risk his whole life. The whole credit goes to him.

Q: BHAGWAN, GOING BACK TO HOLLAND: YOUR COMMUNE IN HOLLAND WAS LIVING IN A PRISON AND NOW HAS MOVED INTO A MONASTERY. IS THIS PROGRESS? AND WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THEM HAVING A DISCO IN A CHURCH NEXT?

A: That's great. I want discos in all the churches and cathedrals and all the mosques and all the temples around the world. They are the best places for disco.

So this is a great advance, that they have turned a church into a disco! That's what I want.

And if they have moved to the monastery, for the first time the monastery will have real people, not hypocrites, in it. For the first time, the monastery will hear

laughter and singing and dancing and people loving each other. The monastery may have seen monks who were simply monsters and nothing else. Now the monastery will see what really the word monk means and what is the meaning of being a monastery.

The word monk means one who is capable of being himself, individual, alone, independent. That is the meaning of the monk: alone. It has nothing to do with Christianity. You will recognize the word in other words: monogamy, monopoly -- it is the same word. Monk, monastery... MONASTERY means people living there totally independent, completely free from any strings and yet they have one thing in common: that they all want to be alone and individuals. This is the common factor that keeps them together.

So it is good that our commune in Holland has moved into a monastery. We will make it a real monastery because my people are real monks, and the monastery will be really celebrating. My people, even if you give them a graveyard, are going to make a carnival there. The graves will become tables for drinking wine.

They will soon turn the graveyard into such a beautiful place that you would never imagine that thousands of dead bodies are under the ground.

The actual fact is, wherever you are sitting, at least ten persons' dead bodies are on that spot underneath you. So many millions of people have lived down the millions of years, it has been calculated that not a single inch on the earth is not a graveyard. And for all these people who have lived on the earth and died, this is the minimum -- that on every spot at least eight persons are buried deep down.

So there is no problem: when we can make any place a place of joy, we can change a graveyard into a joy. Just inquire of those people.... Because it happens often that by the side of the churches there are graveyards, by the side of the monastery there are graveyards. If there are graveyards, transform them into dancing places, playing grounds; fill them with laughter and joy. Perhaps those who are buried there will have for the first time a time which they never had in their life. It is just great.

Q: DO YOU THINK SOME OF THOSE GHOSTS MIGHT STILL BE KICKING AROUND UNDERNEATH?

A: There are no ghosts. There was only one ghost -- the holy ghost -- and he too finished only by making a poor girl pregnant. Then what happened to the holy ghost? He must have committed suicide, thinking of the consequences that followed his making the woman pregnant, which was illegal, criminal, irreligious, a sin.

Secondly, out of that sin, what else can you expect but Jesus Christ? People had to crucify him. Seeing his son being crucified, do you think the holy ghost would have survived? Since then, nothing has been heard about him. No news... the Vatican is silent.

There are no ghosts, there are only dead skeletons underneath. The soul goes on moving to new forms. It depends how you have lived. Your whole life essence determines your new form. What you have desired your whole life and have not been able to fulfill, that desire at the last moment of your life stands as the only thing that determines your life. There is nobody directing anything, it is simply the law.

For example, a man goes on writing to me -- obviously he's from California. It is so difficult to find anything right in California. The man goes on writing to me that he loves to dress himself in women's dresses. When he was in California, there was no problem. There are many who are doing that and they are doing it perfectly. It is very difficult to detect that this is a man -- with tits and all!

But here he finds it difficult, because everybody knows he is a man. So he goes on asking me what he should do: "Should I go through plastic surgery and become a woman?'

Now, this man if he dies will become a woman. That is his whole mind, full of only one desire: to become a woman. And it is my experience that this is not an exceptional case, this is the rule. Men get tired in seventy years' life of being men, and every man thinks women are more juicy, enjoying life more, and he has been simply sucked of all his energy.

And the woman her whole life goes on thinking that, as a woman, whatsoever she is going to do, she is not going to be really equal to man. Liberation or no liberation, man is going to dominate her. The woman carries the desire to be a man, and my experiments with many people about their past lives even surprised me in the beginning, because the man was a woman in the past life, the woman was a man in the past life. For many lives you have been human beings, man or woman.

But if we go deeper, you have been animals. If you go still deeper, you have been plants -- but that is millions of lives back. The whole physiological, biological evolution stopped at man. This whole growth up to now was horizontal. At this point, man has come to a crossroad. He can go on horizontally, changing man to woman, woman to man, but there is no growth. Now he has to take a vertical route, not horizontal. And that vertical route is my whole effort.

Meditation is a way of giving you a vertical route. Then there is no need to be reborn. Bodies move horizontally, souls have wings. Once you are fully alert, aware, conscious, enlightened, then this is your last body, because only bodies can move on the horizontal line. Now you are a soul. You will have to move vertically.

But what a joy! Not to have a cage of bones, muscles, blood vessels, nerve system, a skull.... Sometimes it is good experience to go to a medical college and see a skeleton: this is you, really naked. Not only the clothes are removed... he has gone too far; he has removed everything. Just bones, just the fundamental structure is there, and everything else has been removed.

Once in a while, standing before a mirror, just close your eyes and think that you are a skeleton. Then open your eyes and look into the mirror. Try to figure out what kind of skeleton you have. That's why I say you should first see a few skeletons. I suggest to Vedant and Siddha that in the university you should have a few skeletons hanging around all over the place, so nobody can bypass -- and that will prove also that this is not a marketplace, and everybody has to understand that this is your reality. When the soul is free from all bondage, it moves into the cosmos, it becomes one with the sky, with the sunrise, with the flowers, with the birds, with all that exists. It spreads all over. It has no more any limitations, it is as big and vast as the whole universe itself. That's what I call liberation. That is the end, because nothing is more blissful, more ecstatic, than to achieve it.

Q: BHAGWAN, EARLIER ON YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND YOU WERE JUST TALKING NOW ABOUT THE LAST DESIRE AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH, SO IF SOMEONE GETS REBORN INTO SOME NATIONALITY, DOES THAT WHOLE NATIONAL HISTORY BECOME PART OF THE BODY, OF THE MIND, OR HOW DOES IT CONNECT?

A: Mostly it never happens, or very rarely. A Dutch is born again in Holland; a Hindu goes on again and again being a Hindu, because his whole conditioning can be adjusted in a Hindu environment. Perhaps, rarely.... I have yet to come across a person who was something else in his past life; now he is an Italian, and in the past life he was a German. People go on being born in the same race, in the same atmosphere. The only change that happens is from man to woman.

Perhaps my people will find it difficult where to be reborn, because now they don't belong to any race and they don't belong to any country. But don't be afraid, we have so many sannyasins throughout the world, you can get born as a sannyasin somewhere -- and there are a few sannyasin women, sannyasin men, who want children. But I have not come across a case where somebody is born from Tibet into India, or from India into China. It is unnatural. The soul flows in the same rut to which it has become accustomed.

There are many cases in India of small children remembering their past lives. It happens only in India, for the simple reason that that is the only country that believes in rebirth. Christians believe in only one birth, Jews believe in only one birth, Mohammedans believe in only one birth. It is only the religions born in India who say that there are thousands of births. It is a long process -- seventy years is not enough for a sleeping person to be awakened. He needs more time.

They believe it; I know it.

It is certainly true; it is not a hypothesis. But I don't want you to believe it, because for you it will not be a truth. I would like you to explore. Go back into your past lives -- it is really a tremendous trick, just terrific -- and as you go

backwards, you are simply amazed what kind of person you are and how many forms you have taken before. And this is a great help, to understand that no form has been a contentment to you. From every form you have died in discontent and despair, so now don't miss the chance of moving vertically.

It is good for animals to move horizontally. Ordinarily, they also move horizontally, and it is symbolical, really significant. The only animal on the earth standing, against gravitation -- walking on four is easier because it is not against gravitation, the force of gravitation is equally distributed all over the body-you are also vertical, just as gravitation is vertical. That's why in sleep you find so much relaxation, because in sleep you become horizontal. You get tired standing up, sitting long; then you need lying down.

How does that lying down bring you relaxation, rejuvenation? Just being in tune with gravitation. Standing, you are really doing a miracle. You are against gravitation, which pulls everything down, and your heart has to pump blood into your head, upwards. It is a miracle that you are performing every second.

Your heart is really a rebel, a revolution against gravitation. It is forcing blood upwards.

It is now a well-established fact why animals have not been able to grow brains:

for the simple reason that they are horizontal. In their heads, blood flows so much that the necessary small cells which constitute your brain-seven million cells in your small skull -- are so small that in that flood of blood they cannot survive. They cannot be born, either.

Just because man stood on two legs and the head became against gravitation, a very small blood flow reaches to the head and the head can grow a very delicate system of nerves, a delicate combination of cells. But for that a very small and silent flow of blood is needed.

That's why I'm against anybody doing the headstand posture of yoga. More than three seconds is dangerous; your brain cells cannot stand too much blood coming to them for more than three seconds. And you can see the result: not a single Hindu yogi has contributed anything to the world. Those yogis are standing on their heads, they destroy their brain, and the brain is the necessary instrument to create anything. The Hindu yogis have been the most uncreative people in the world, they have been just the parasites of our society.

So, anybody who is interested in standing on the head, it is really a good exercise -- but only for three seconds. Then just be back on your feet. It is good because it refreshes your mind: just a sudden shower of blood and the whole mind is refreshed. All the dead cells will go back when you jump again to your feet, the blood returning back to the body will itself take all dead cells that were hanging around in your head. The exercise is good, but exact timing... nobody should do it more than three seconds.

So, people are continuously born into the same culture, except a few exceptional people -- travelers, nomads, who don't have any home, who don't have any

attachment, who may be born into some new environment. And that's from where the trouble child is born.

You know the word problem child. It is not the child's decision to make any trouble, but he is a misfit, he does not belong to your heritage, your conditions, your past. He has some other past, some other conditions, and there is going to be a clash between the parents and the child. Most probably the parents are going to prevail, they will destroy the child's heritage and force him to belong to them, to their race, to their religion.

But these children who are born into a different race, into a different country, for some reason, are really very valuable. Any problem child is a very valuable phenomenon. If we allow him freedom to grow, he will bring new richness to your race, to your country. He will introduce something that your race has never known. These children prove to be the geniuses.

And vice versa: you can look into the lives of your geniuses and you will always find in their childhood their parents had as much trouble with them as human beings can tolerate. All geniuses are a trouble in their childhood, and any child who is not a trouble in his childhood is going to do all kinds of businesses -- Werner Erhard and all kinds of shops and marketplaces -- but he cannot be a genius. It is difficult... he is burdened with his own past, and his parents have burdened him with their past. He is in a kind of split.

Perhaps this will give some insight to you about schizophrenia. Why do some people suffer from schizophrenia? Because from two different directions two conditions meet in them, but they cannot mix and become one, they remain two.

Sometimes one is up and the person starts speaking in a different way, behaving in a different way; another time the other is up and the person behaves so diametrically opposite to his normal behavior that all you can do is take him to the psychiatrist. You start thinking he is sick.

He is not sick, he is simply suffering because two long traditions have met in him. All that he needs is to be a witness of both the conditionings and separate himself, disidentify himself from both the conditionings, and the whole schizophrenia will disappear.

In fact, the moment he disidentifies himself from both the conditions, he will have a richness that you cannot have, because he can use from both the conditions, both the heritages, things which he wants. He is now the master.

The Last Testament, Vol 1