Chapter 23

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

ANSWER:* All colors are my favorites, except red.

Q:* DO YOU SEE A LOT OF RED AROUND HERE?

A:* Your tie!. That is a lot.

Q:* WHY DO THESE PEOPLE LIKE YOU SO MUCH? WHY ARE YOU SO APPEALING?

A:* I am also wondering.

Q:* IS IT THE BEARD OR THE MONEY OR THE PRESTIGE?

A:* I don't have any money. I don't have any prestige. I am notorious all over the world. What prestige can I have? To be with me needs courage. To be with a notorious man... you will lose your prestige if you are with me.

Q:* WHY IS THAT?

A:* Because I am notorious. You need not do anything; you just be with me and you will lose your prestige, your respectability, your service. Everything will be gone.

They love me because I love them, and they cannot love me more than I love them. The love of all my sannyasins around the world is put on one side of a scale and my love for them on the other side, I'm going to be weightier.

Q:* WHEN OR IF YOU DO PASS AWAY, OR IF YOU DIED, IF SOMETHING HAPPENED, WHO WOULD TAKE OVER? WOULD THERE BE SOMEONE TO TAKE OVER? WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO RAJNEESHPURAM IF SOMETHING HAPPENED TO YOU?

A:* Let me start from some point.... I have been waiting my whole life for somebody to ask it, but nobody asks me what will happen to me when I die.

Nobody is worried about that.

I will be dying and you will be living here. The whole trouble and the journey into the unknown is for me. Nobody seems to be concerned about that; everybody is concerned about those who will be left behind, living. What kind of minds have human beings got? Very egocentric. I am dying and even at my last breath you will be asking, "What will happen to all these people who will be living?" Nobody will ask, "Bhagwan, forget all about us. We will be living and you are going on an unknown pilgrimage. What can we do for you?"

Q:* WHAT KIND OF A PILGRIMAGE WOULD YOU BE GOING ON WHEN YOU DIE?

A:* Whatever kind of pilgrimage, when one is dying at least he is out of this world, out of this life, out of all that is known. He is moving into the dark and the unknown and the unfathomable. If you really love the person you will be concerned about him. But the trouble is that everybody is concerned about himself, although you will be living and I will be dying.

Q:* WHAT COULD WE DO THEN? WHAT COULD WE THE LIVING DO TO HELP?

A:* At least you could ask the question. But for my whole life I have been waiting and nobody has asked it. I am simply pointing at the fact of how egocentric man is. Now your question....

My whole teaching is centered on the present moment, this moment. I do not care for any tomorrows. In the first place, the tomorrow never comes; whatever comes is always the now. You are never there, you are always here. Existence knows only two words, now and here.

I have heard about an atheist who was very much against God. To remind himself and his clients, his children, his wife, his friends, he had written in his sitting room in big bold letter, "God is nowhere."

Then a child is born the the atheist, a small child. He starts growing and learning.

Learning the alphabet, he reads the sentence, "God is nowhere." But nowhere is such a big word for him that he splits the word in two. He reads, "God is now here." That mistake transformed the whole mind of his father. For the first time he could see that nowhere consists of now and here.

Existence is now and here. I have never bothered about the future. When I leave the body these people will celebrate, as we celebrate everything. And I have no responsibility for them, so the question of anybody succeeding me does not arise.

The successor is needed only when I am having any responsibility. I have no responsibility. My approach is that everybody is responsible for his own life.

In this commune they are not here to dump their responsibility on me; they are here to learn how to stop dumping responsibility on others, how to take the whole responsibility of life on one's own shoulders. That's what gives a man dignity, integrity, self. For the first time he feels he is. And the responsibility makes him free of all kinds of slaveries, enslavements.

So, I'm not going to say what they have to do when I am gone. That is manipulating people even when you are dead. Moses is still manipulating the Jews. He was not satisfied while alive. While alive he tortured his people for forty years in the Middle East desert in search of some holy land.

Q:* SO WOULD YOU SAY THAT THE BIBLE IS ACCURATE IN SPEAKING OF MOSES, OR IS THAT A MYTH?

A:* The BIBLE is just fiction.

Q:* YOU MENTIONED GOD JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO AND I WAS WONDERING WHAT YOU CONCEPT OF GOD IS. I KNOW YOU'VE BEEN ASKED THAT SO MANY TIMES, BUT....

A:* My concept is exactly whole because I can read nowhere; I don't have to cut words in two. God is nowhere.

Q:* GOD IS NOWHERE. I WAS WONDERING THAT, BECAUSE WHEN...

A:* No, wait, don't wonder, let me finish. Moses tortured Jews for forty years.

Almost seventy-five percent of his followers died in that stupid search for a holy land. And finally, not because they had found the holy land, but just to save face, he declared Israel to be the holy land. Now there is nothing holy in Israel! And Moses gave commandments to them to be followed after he is gone. The same was done by Mohammed, by Buddha. They were too much concerned about what their people are going to do when they are gone.

It is something of tremendous importance that they were so much concerned.

The reason is that in their presence they have persuaded the disciples to repress every natural instinct. Sex has to be repressed and they have to be celibate.

Under their influence and charismatic personality people have accepted something absolutely unnatural. Only an impotent man can be celibate; and no impotent man has been known to become enlightened, not yet. He has no energy in him. Enlightenment will need a tremendous explosion of energy. He cannot

even create a child; how can he create himself in a totally luminous way? So no impotent man has ever become enlightened.

And all the people who became enlightened were really over-sexual. In fact their over-sexuality was one of the causes for their enlightenment. They had so much energy that the woman was not enough. Many women were also not enough.

They had such a great energy that they wanted to make love to the whole existence itself, and that's what enlightenment is, and orgiastic experience with existence itself.

Q:* ARE YOU ENLIGHTENED?

A:* Yes.

Q:* HOW ENLIGHTENED. ARE YOU VERY ENLIGHTENED?

A:* There are no quantities in enlightenment; either you are enlightened or you are not enlightened.

Q:* I WANTED TO ASK YOU A QUESTION AS FAR AS OTHER RELIGIONS....

A:* No, I have not answered your first question. You asked me what I am thinking about these people after I am gone. I am not even thinking now, when I am here.

I am giving them total freedom. I have not enforced anything on them that will make me afraid that once I am gone these celibates are going to create trouble. I have not repressed anything. If they want to smoke, I tell them to smoke the best cigar possible -- don't go for anything second rate. If you want to love, find out the best man, the best woman, and go into it as totally as possible. I am in support of expression and all the so-called religions were in support of repression. When you repress people you are certainly afraid that when you are gone there is going to be chaos.

That problem does not exist for me. When I am gone there is going to be no chaos because chaos was all that I have been training my people for. My commune is a chaos and yet a very organic chaos, a very creative chaos, a chaos out of which stars are born. That's why that kind of question becomes very difficult for me to answer. I am not giving them any discipline, any rules of conduct. I am simply teaching them to be aware, alert, to be independent. Take your responsibility and do whatsoever you want to do. Don't bother about Moses, or Jesus, or Buddha, or me.

Jesus lived his way; he never bothered about others. If he had bothered about others; the Jews would never have crucified him. Buddha never bothered about anybody. I don't accept anybody as my master or my leader. I am nobody's

shadow, nobody's carbon copy, and that's what I am teaching to my people:

Don't be anybody's carbon copy, including me.

So, alive, dance with me, rejoice with me. When I am gone continue to dance and rejoice in remembrance of a man who gave you freedom, who gave you individuality. What else is there to bother about the future? Wherever I am -- somewhere I must be -- I will go on showering my love on my people and I know they will find ways to respond. But that is something very private; I cannot reveal it to a non-sannyasin.

Q:* YOU HAVE MADE A LOT OF DIFFERENT REMARKS ABOUT RELIGIONS, AND -- I BELIEVE THIS IS YOUR MOST RECENT ONE; YOU'LL CORRECT ME, I'M SURE YOU WILL -- THAT THIS IS THE TRUE RELIGION, THIS IS THE TRUE CHURCH. CORRECT?

A:* Right.

Q:* YOU ALSO SAID THAT YOU WERE BUILDING AN ORCHESTRA OUT OF ALL THESE OTHER RELIGIONS. HOW DO YOU PROPOSE TO DO THAT?

A:* I have done it already. There is no question of proposition. You can see my commune, Jews, Mohammedans, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas.

Q:* SO YOU WEREN'T SPEAKING OF THE WHOLE WORLD, THEN, YOU WERE JUST SPEAKING OF IN THE COMMUNE?

A:* I am just speaking of my world. Hell to the whole world!

Q:* YOU MADE A COMMENT A FEW YEARS BACK, I BELIEVE, THAT TWO THIRDS OF THE WORLD POPULATION WOULD DIE OF AIDS. NOW RECENTLY ALL THE THINGS THAT WE'VE SEEN IN THE NEWS, THAT THE FIGURES ARE JUST ASTRONOMICAL, DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR PREDICTION IS STARTING TO COME TRUE?

A:* No need because they are going to die; there is no way to save them.

Q:* HOW SOON DO YOU THINK?

A:* Within the last twenty years before the twenty-first century, they are going to die either by nuclear weapons or by AIDS. The nuclear weapons are the culmination of our whole past politics. AIDS is the culmination of our whole religious past.

AIDS is the logical conclusion of all sexual perversions; and religions have caused all kinds of perversions in man. Homosexuality is a very religious

discipline. Monks were forced to live together in monasteries where no woman was allowed to enter. There is a Catholic monastery in Athos, one thousand years old. In these one thousand years not even a six-month-old baby girl has entered the monastery. Even that is not allowed. I sometimes wonder -- a six-month-old baby girl -- what is the fear and what kind of monks are living inside? Are they monks or monsters? And in Athos the rule is that once you enter the monastery only your dead body comes out. You will never come out alive to have any contact with other human beings. There are nunneries where only women can live; no men can enter. Now what do you want? You are creating the situation for homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation and all kinds of things. These monks, these nuns are the original sources of AIDS.

So your politics have brought you to the third world war, which is looming on the horizon, and your religions have brought you to AIDS. Your political and religious leaders have done great service to humanity and to this planet.

I am certainly concerned about my people. They have been given all the information about AIDS. Meanwhile, the governments are trying to repress exact information for the simple reason that if they accept that AIDS is spreading, if may create anarchy, chaos, turmoil. Rich people can afford private doctors, private physicians, and they can keep their mouths shut with their dollars. There are many people who have AIDS; they are confirmed by the medical profession but the public does not know about them.

Just think of the situation. A person who has AIDS can live at the most two years, at the most, which is almost impossible. If he remains secluded, avoids all kinds of infections, does not come in contact with anybody, perhaps he may survive two years; otherwise, six months is going to be the average. Just think, you are given six months to live. You would not like to be condemned by people that you have AIDS. You bribe the doctor. And you have only six months to live, naturally you will make as many sexual contacts as possible. Life is fleeing out of your hands. You would like to do everything that you always wanted to do but you had time to postpone. Now there is no time to postpone, so these people who are not made known to the public are going around spreading AIDS like wildfire.

Q:* SO YOU DON'T THINK THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS DOING ENOUGH TO CONTROL AIDS, THEN?

A:* Not at all. They are doing nothing. Their senators have AIDS and they have not yet imprisoned those senators. Their senators are homosexuals; they should be immediately arrested. There is no other way: put them into imprisonment.

Q:* WOULD YOU DO THAT WITH A SANNYASIN IF HE OR SHE HAD AIDS?

A:* There is no need because my sannyasins are living in a totally different world. I have one million sannyasins around the world and I am trying for them all to come and live in communes, not to live in the outside world. So I am segregating them into different places, into different countries, in communes. We do not condemn anything; every sannyasin goes through the medical test and if he finds that he has AIDS the whole commune is full of compassion for the person.

Q:* ARE YOU TESTING FOR AIDS, THEN?

A:* Yes, we have our own medical center, all kinds of expertise: doctors, nurses, a hospital. And we have a special place far away in the mountains where we remove those people who have AIDS. We take care of them. We give them everything they need, books to read, films to see, games to play. They are respected in the commune, and everybody is responsible that they are no longer to make any sexual contact. Not even kissing, because AIDS is caught through kissing.

So I'm telling my sannyasins to change their patterns and drop the idea of kissing which is certainly unhygienic even without AIDS. Two persons mixing their saliva which contains all kinds of germs. And there are idiots who are doing French kissing. I have suggested that my sannyasins change that pattern: start rubbing noses with each other. Hygienic, clean, and if sometimes somebody has a cold, at the most you can catch cold. And this is not a big problem. Nobody considers a cold a disease. If you don't take medicine it goes in seven days; if you take medicine it goes in one week. And this is not something new; Eskimos have been doing it for their whole history. They don't kiss, they rub their noses and they enjoy rubbing their noses. As much as you want, you can rub. There is no problem and I think Eskimos are far more progressive, at lest about kissing.

There are other aboriginal tribes also, in India, where noses are rubbed and kissing is simply laughed at.

When Christian missionaries reached those aboriginal tribes to spread Christianity, the aboriginals have not stopped laughing yet about two things.

One they call the missionary posture, man on top of the woman, which looked very ugly to the aboriginal. The woman is fragile, delicate, she should be on top.

And this huge animal is putting all his weight and doing push-ups on the poor woman. In India this posture is called missionary posture because they came to know about it for the first time through Christian missionaries. Otherwise in India there are known eighty-four different postures and in those eighty-four different postures the Christian missionary posture is not included. And second thing that they could not believe is that these people kiss. And these people are trying to open hospitals, medicine -- can't they understand what they are doing, that this is very unhygienic?

The aboriginals who are five thousand years behind the civilization have never agreed for kissing. Even though they had become Christians -- they were poor and Christians could provide them with food, clothes, education -- they have not started kissing. They still rub noses.

So, as far as my sannyasins are concerned, perhaps they will be the only ones who can escape the calamity of AIDS. We don't condemn anybody; if he has AIDS, so what? Take precautions. He is not humiliated and disrespected for that; on the other hand, he becomes the center of the love of the whole commune.

Now we have two sannyasins who have confirmed AIDS. We are taking care of them and we have given them the most beautiful part of our land, the best beautiful view.

Q:* ARE THEY HERE IN THIS COMMUNE?

A:* Yes, they are here in this commune, but we have one hundred twenty-six square miles, so they are miles away, beyond the lake, living in a beautiful place and doing whatsoever they can do. They can do proof-reading, they can do editing or whatever they want. They can simply make a beautiful garden there.

And if both those two sannyasins want to make love to each other there is no problem. Nothing more can happen to them; what has to happen has happened.

Perhaps two persons having AIDS making love may come to discover this is the only way to get rid of the disease -- nobody knows. So we may be able to find out: if they survive more than two years that means we have found what medical science has failed to find. But we will be taking care of these people. They are victims of religions, but what they can do?

If the politicians and the religious leaders -- that means nuclear weapons and AIDS -- are in a race to destroy humanity, I don't think politicians have guts enough to go for a third world war, because both sides, America and the Soviet Union, have enough nuclear weapons to destroy this planet seven hundred times. I don't think any politician in America or any politician in Russia has guts enough -- and what is the point?

The whole point in a war is to be victorious, but in this war nobody is going to be left alive. The question of who was victorious and who was defeated will remain unsettled and there will be no one to write the history, either. Just because of the totality of war, war is an impossibility. There is no need for pacifists, unnecessary to scream and take protest march. Just forget all about it; nuclear weapons have already done. They have finished the idea of war. Politicians can go on talking about war because that keeps them in power, but there is going to be no war.

Q:* WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IN YOUR OPINION IF A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY GOT HOLD OF A BOMB AND DETONATED IT AND STARTED ANOTHER WAR?

A:* NOBODY can start it because everybody knows that starting it is finishing the whole humanity. And those poor countries who are dying.... Do you think Ethiopia is going to have nuclear weapons? Do you think India is going to have nuclear weapons? They are trying, but half of their population is on the verge of becoming another Ethiopia. They are selling their wheat. The people who have produced the wheat are dying because they are hungry, and their wheat -- their production, their labor -- is being exported so that India can manage to have a nuclear plant. Sheer stupidity. But even if they can get, nobody can conceive India becoming a nuclear power comparable to the Soviet Union or America.

Q:* INDIA MAY NOT HAVE IT NOW AND IT MAY NOT BE A THREAT, BUT WHAT ABOUT CUBA OR LIBYA OR KHADAFI?

A:* NOBODY. Even if they can afford, even if they can make, nobody has guts to start seeing the whole perspective. The whole thing is clear that if you start, that is not the end; soon you will be retaliated with nuclear missiles and you will be destroyed. And your starting it will mean the end of the world. So I don't think there is any possibility of third world war. It is simply canceled. It is strange how things happen in history -- war goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and a point comes when it is to big, and you cannot manage to have it. War itself commits suicide, that's what the third world war is.

Once Albert Einstein was asked, "Can you say something to us about the third world war?" He said, "I have no idea. If you want to know about the fourth world war I can say something." The inquirer was simply at a loss. He could not believe what Einstein was saying. "About the third world war you cannot say anything? What can you say about the fourth world war?" And Einstein said, "It will never happen; that much can be said about it. But about the third world war there is no way to say anything."

So the war is certainly canceled -- nuclear war. Any other kinds of war can go on.

They are just football games, so I'm not concerned about that. But AIDS is certainly my concern because it is spreading, individual to individual.

No government control is possible. Even your president, your prime ministers may be having it. Nobody knows unless everybody is checked. You should begin with President Ronald Reagan -- that is the place to start with -- the White House should be completely checked because this White House is just like white lies.

What is going on inside it is all black. In Oregon catch hold of Governor Atiyeh and start checking from there. First all your assembly members, your senators; first do it on the highest level because these are the people who can keep it to themselves and go on spreading. And then by and by come lower and lower, and find out people, then these people have to be segregated someplace.

It is such an urgency it cannot be delayed. And the whole humanity has to be made aware of all the facts relating to AIDS, all precautions that are possible.

And around the world create the atmosphere that if anybody has AIDS he is

simply a victim of centuries of stupid religious ideas. Don't be hard on him. Help him so at least in these last days of his life, he can relax. There is no need for him to be employed, no need for him to think of other responsibilities. Free him from all responsibilities. Let him enjoy music, movies, literature. Be compassionate to him.

I don't think your world is going to do it, but my communes are doing it already.

Q:* NOW YOU'VE MADE A POINT IN THE PAST THAT YOU HAVE A VERY OPEN SEXUAL COMMUNE HERE. HOW DOES THAT EFFECT THE CHILDREN IN REGARDS TO CHILDREN ON THE OUTSIDE? ARE THEY BEING EXPOSED TO SEX AT AN EARLIER AGE? HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY DIFFERENCES?

A:* There is no problem at all. Children are told everything about sex not in any roundabout way of explaining, but direct and exact. And once their curiosity is satisfied they don't bother about it; they will bother only when they are sexually mature. In the outside society they become interested before their sexual maturity because they see in the movies, they see in the streets, they see in their parents, and they wonder what is going on.

A child is very curious to know about everything that he comes access, and you create all kinds of curiosities. He knows his father is reading magazines like PLAYBOY, and he also looks into the magazines when the father is in the bathroom. He knows his mother is frittering with somebody else. Children are very conscious, very alert, silent, but watching everything that is going on around them. Naturally he becomes curious -- something is being kept secret from him. -- and this curiosity is dangerous; he may try to do something that others are doing. It must be really great because everybody is doing it, every movie, every family. All the children are talking about it, so there must be something really experienceable.

But in my commune it is totally different. We tell our children everything. We tell them they are allowed to ask all the question, that there is nothing to hide, there is no secret. And we tell them that soon they will become mature, soon they will be having sexual experiences, so it is better to be acquainted with all the facts about sexuality as well as all the fictions which are all untrue but have been told to children down the ages. So we are making them aware of the facts and the fictions. Then, when they are sexually mature, we do no not prevent them from having sexual affairs. We simply introduce them to precautions; that is their responsibility. If a girl becomes pregnant she becomes a burden on the boy she loves and she becomes burdened by her own act, so we provide to them all birth control methods. In every bathroom we have free birth control methods available. They can go to the medical center and get the pill. We help them in every way.

We don't want them to remain celibate because celibacy is cause of AIDS. We want them to know as many girls, as many boys as possible. The richer their experience the better for choosing a life partner later. If a boy has known hundreds of girls he is more experienced and more capable of finding the right girl with whom he can manage to live. There will be less nagging, less fighting, less jealousy because the girl has also experienced hundreds of boys before she decided for this boy. The boy had experienced hundreds of girls before he decided for this girl. They both know.

And in my commune it is absolutely allowed even after marriage that if the girl wants to go with someone for a day or two, or the husband wants to go with someone, it should be respected. It is their freedom. Once in a while a little change is good, and it is not destructive of marriage. On the contrary, it helps the people to remain together. Their love becomes more and more a friendship. In the ordinary world people are together but their love becomes more and more an intimate enmity. Here, their togetherness becomes more and more a friendship, and any day they want to change their partners that is their freedom, their choice. So nobody is crying and weeping and screaming. If you hear anybody screaming, crying, you should know that he is doing Dynamic Meditation; it is not the ordinary screaming that goes on in every other household. And we give them one hour every morning to scream as much as they can, so for twenty-three hours there is no need. We are absolutely simple and natural.

In the four years we have been here not a single child has been born. People understand their responsibility. We are the only people in the whole world who understand responsibility. Right now the world population is four billion and it is increasing at the rate of one billion per decade. By the end of this century there is not going to be elbow room -- on both sides you will find somebody standing.

What are your governments doing and what are your churches doing? Four sannyasins have certainly died in our commune but not a new child has been born. And we are not going to give birth to children till the world population is reduced to one fourth.

Q:* ONE FOURTH OF WHAT IT IS TODAY?

A:* What it is today. Without coming to one fourth there will be Ethiopias, there will be Indias, there will be small-scale wars. These are just methods of nature to bring balance. Nuclear war is out of the question; there will be diseases, AIDS and everything, just to cut the population.

But my commune is perfectly responsible, happy, rejoicing. It is not that anybody is controlling them; we only inform them that these are the facts -- now they are intelligent enough to draw the conclusions. And my communes certainly are intelligent enough. Almost everybody is a graduate. Most of the people have masters degrees, a few have Ph.D.'s, a few are D.Litt.'s. And they come from all professions: psychiatrists, professors, doctors, engineers, electronic experts,

computer experts. We are absolutely self-sufficient. And that's what we are doing around the world. We are trying to make every commune self-sufficient.

If the outside world dies of AIDS or anything we can still survive and we can manage humanity's heritage. The planet need not die with the popes and with the presidents and the prime ministers. It can live, go on living with dancing and celebrating sannyasins. But we are not serious about anything. This, too, is not a serious affair. We do everything playfully.

Q:* I JUST HAVE ONE FINAL QUESTION TO ASK YOU. WHAT IS A TYPICAL DAY FOR YOU? WHAT DO YOU DO FIRST IN THE MORNING? HOW DO YOU START YOUR DAYS?

A:* First, I'm an absolutely lazy man. I call myself the lazy man's guide to enlightenment, so I am a non-doer. In the morning I have to be awakened otherwise I'm not going to wake up. At six o'clock they wake my up, and then I take one and a half hours in my bathroom relaxing in my bath. I love my bathroom the best; it is my temple. They have made for me really beautiful, gorgeous bathrooms. And not only one because I'm always for two of everything, not less than that, because if something goes wrong in one bathroom I'm not going to miss my bath. A second bathroom has to be constantly alert and ready. So for one and a half hours I enjoy in my bathroom. I have the best bubble baths. I'm allergic to perfumes, so I can take only herbal bubble baths. If you come to my bathroom you will be surprised to see what a treasure I have got there: the world's best shampoos, hair conditioners, liquid soaps without perfume, all kinds. It is really difficult every day for me to choose.... It takes my almost five minutes to figure out what this combination will do.

After my one and a half hours I take one glass of juice; that is my whole breakfast. And then I go for my morning talk, two and a half hours gossiping with my sannyasins. I don't have any gospel I have only gossips, and I laugh with them, enjoy with them. By eleven I'm back. Eleven is my time for my lunch.

and has been for my whole life. I have never missed my lunch at eleven. At eleven-thirty I go to sleep. That, too, I have never missed.

I have always slept from eleven till two for the simple reason that if you sleep in the day for one or two hours, you have two mornings instead of one. And why miss the other? And sleeping is just a beautiful activity. Patanjali, the founder of yoga, has described the ultimate state of consciousness as very similar to deep sleep. The only difference is that in the ultimate state of consciousness -- what he calls samadhi -- one is aware; in deep sleep one is not aware. For me now there is no difference: my sleep is my samadhi. I am aware, so I am enjoying my sleep in a double way. Patanjali, Buddha, Mahavira, all those great Indian founders of religion missed something that I am enjoying -- they missed the afternoon nap.

They could not sleep because all these so-called great prophets and messiahs were fulfilling the expectations of mediocre people who were their followers.

Now it doesn't look right for a Buddha to sleep in the day -- it looks lazy, it looks luxurious. And Buddha had not guts enough to say to those followers, that "If you cannot accept me as having an afternoon nap, then just get lost. Just to fulfill your expectations, I am not going to change myself."

Many times many people have told me that a religious man, particularly in India, should wake up at three o'clock in the morning. That is the traditional Indian spirituality, three o'clock in the morning. I said, "I am ready to lose my enlightenment, my religiousness and everything, but forget completely that I am going to wake up at three o'clock in the morning. That is the best time to sleep; the most precious time is between three and five -- those two hours are the deepest. It is a scientific fact, but I have known it according to my own experience that those two hours are the most important because you go deeper.

And I am fully conscious, so I can see when I go deep. Now science has come to support it. They have found a way -- your temperature falls down when you go deeper into sleep. Between three and five, your temperature comes. down; otherwise for twenty-two hours it remains the same, normal. For two hours, it suddenly falls down. So I enjoy my afternoon sleep.

Then at two o'clock I have to be awakened again. I go for a drive that I have always loved, and my sannyasins have made a beautiful road just for me.

Perhaps I am the poorest and the richest man in the world: I don't possess anything, but everything that anybody can possess, I use it. I don't think even the Queen of England has a private road going into the forest in the hills by the side of a lake. It is used only for one hour, and there is no traffic, so there is no question of following any stupid laws of being on the right or being on the left.

Mostly I follow being in the middle, which is not allowed anywhere else in the world. That's why I enjoy it.

Back at three o'clock, I rest just sitting in my chair. I have a beautiful haiku from a Japanese poet which says: Sitting silently, doing nothing, and the grass grows by itself. That's all -- haikus are very small statements, but of tremendous meaning.

So for one and a half hours, I am just sitting silently, doing nothing, and let the grass grow itself. And it is growing. My grass is not green, it is red. And it is growing all around the world while I am simply sitting in my room, doing nothing. Even Basho was not aware -- he was thinking only of the grass by his side in the Zen garden where he was silently sitting. My grass is growing all over the world and I am not doing anything for it. But one and a half hours I enjoy sitting; then again for one and a half hours, I am back in my bathroom for my evening shower. Then I have my supper, and from the supper I come directly here for the interviews. By nine, nine-fifteen, I will be back. Then my personal secretary has one or two hours -- whatsoever she needs -- for any advice for the commune around the world, any letters to be answered. Mostly, they do them themselves, unless they find something that needs my advice; then they bring it to me. At eleven in the night, all my life I have eaten a certain kind of Indian sweet that I eat and go to bed. Without eating my sweet, I cannot sleep.

Q:* WHAT KIND OF A SWEET IS IT?

A:* It is a Bengali sweet which is not known in the West, but is the best. It is made of milk but the butter is taken out. You heat the milk and just pour lemon juice into the boiling milk. It separates, and what is left is called *** (name of sweet).

It is something that the West has not used. It is the lightest sweet. In Bengal it is given to patients or to those who are recovering from a long sickness. It is very helpful and tremendously delicious. From eleven to six, I am again knocked out.

And it existence wants me again tomorrow, I will be awakened; otherwise I am gone -- gone with the wind.

My life is very simple -- the same. For thirty-five years it has been the same. I never got bored by it for the simple reason that I never compare two days. If you go on giving me the same food for a whole year, I will not complain because I don't compare. Yesterday is gone, finished. I again enjoy the same food with the same freshness, with the same excitement, with the same enlightenment as I have always done. My people go on doing everything for me. You see this beautiful robe? You were impressed by the colors -- my people make my robes, my people make my shoes, my people make my watches. Everything that I have on is made by my people. That's why I say everything that I am wearing is priceless because it is made of love. If somebody is going to give me a billion dollars for this watch, I am not going to sell it. There is no price which can purchase this watch because it has been made by my sannyasins with so much love and so much care. And these are not diamonds -- and that's why I loved it even more -- these are real stones, defeating diamonds.

I have always enjoyed whenever a stone defeats a diamond, whenever a genius comes out from the lower classes and defeats all the super-rich. And it has been always so -- all the geniuses have come from lower classes. The super-rich have been absolutely impotent; they have not contributed to civilization in any way.

They have not given birth to a single Picasso, a single Dostoevski, a single Turgenev, Gorky, Marx, Albert Einstein... they are just futile, getting fat.

In America there are half a million people suffering from over eating, obesity; and this year exactly half a million people in the third world are going to die of hunger. It is a strange world we have created in which half a million people are dying because they have no food, and the other half-million are dying because they are eating too much. Their fridges are so full.

I have heard a story of a man whose wife was becoming bigger and bigger, fatter and fatter and was looking so ugly that to go with her in the society was just a shame. So he brought a beautiful picture of a nude girl, well-proportioned, and put that picture inside the fridge, where his wife was continuously going to give an idea what a woman should be like. But the trouble changed: the man started going to the fridge to look at the girl! The wife stopped; she hated to see that girl.

She would have killed that girl. She stopped going to the fridge and she started getting slimmer. But the husband started going to look at the girl and while looking at the girl, he would get interested in the ice cream and this and that.

Soon the situation changed -- the wife was slim and the husband was ashamed to go with her in the outside society.

But this is what is happening around the world. A few people are dying because they have too much; a few people are dying because they have nothing. Just a little understanding, and we can create a beautiful humanity and a beautiful world where nobody needs to die, where nobody needs to suffer from AIDS. All that you have to do is to change stupid ideas and make man a natural human being, and allow his humanity and nature total freedom.

The Last Testament, Vol 1